October 2008

Airlines You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
We can be pretty isolated in North America, thinking that the airlines which take us to Europe (United, Delta, British Air, etc.) are all there are. But there are dozens of regional European carriers that might fill some of your inter-Europe travel needs. On the Alternative Airlines website are listed more than 100 European airlines.
Two other sites with Europe air info are LowCostAirlinesEurope.org and Attitude Travel.
Some of these sites have booking engines, but we have not tried any of them. The only low-cost, regional Euro airline we’ve flown was easyJet from the UK (to Vienna and Prague), and we booked those tickets direct on the easyJet website from the U.S.
If nothing else, the lists of airlines can make for interesting cocktail-party trivia.

July 2008

The airline industry continues – putting it simply – to go crazy. New fees, dropped routes, changed schedules, luggage restrictions. Nobody really knows what to do, or even what to recommend. The only thing we can add is to keep abreast of the travel news (there are several good travel news websites, and some good travel news bloggers, but our single best source for travel news is probably USA Today’s Today in the Sky section), be flexible, and (if possible) plan as close to the last minute as you feel comfortable with. Yes, we know this contradicts all our advice to plan ahead and make lodging reservations in advance, but if you don’t know whether your flight will be changed or cancelled, it’s harder to feel comfortable making other long-term plans (unless those plans are fully refundable or changeable without fees).

June 2008

In the never-ending battle against car-rental ripoffs, here’s another tool to consider.
American Express offers a $19.95 car rental insurance policy that is primary rental insurance. Insurance provided by all other credit cards (except Diners) is secondary – in other words, the credit-card insurance only kicks in after you’ve gone through your personal auto insurance provider to try to resolve the issue. The Amex policy is valid anywhere in the world except in Australia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, or New Zealand (which is typical with most credit-card car-rental insurance coverage).
(There are some slightly different coverages and options, depending on what state you live in. See the Amex site.)
The Amex coverage is for the entire rental period (for up to 42 days), not per day. This seems like a cheap way to give yourself an additional layer of protection, especially if you’re a leisure traveler who rents a few times a year for longer periods (rather than a business traveler renting for a day or two many times a year). You are required to register your Amex card, but there are no charges until you reserve and pay for your rental with your Amex card.

May 2008

Flight Centre Limited, a large Australian travel agency, has expressed concern about the impending June 1 switch to all-electronic airline ticketing. There has been nary a peep from the U.S. media about the switch, yet Flight Centre makes some interesting points, including:
“...significant issues had not been resolved in relation to: Customers travelling with infants, as most carriers would not allow infants to travel on e-tickets; Some codeshare and interline fares involving more than one carrier; Some round-the-world fares.”
We’re not sure how much – if any – impact there will be for U.S. travellers, but in today’s aviation environment, anything that throws a wrench in the system can have cascading effects down the line.

We’re always looking for better flight-planning tools, and we’ve been searching for the best “Who Flies Where” website. Although we frequently use ITA Software, its matrix results are sometimes too detailed, especially when we haven’t even begun price shopping.
The UK site jetnav.co.uk seems to offer a good Who Flies Where tool. In our rather limited tests, it shows more airlines than ITA does (ITA doesn’t show Southwest or easyJet, for example). Another thing we like about jetnav is that although you do have to plug in dates, the results show what days a flight operates.
Since jetnav doesn’t list prices, the results are displayed by flight times (great for planning), and the endless combinations in ITA are simplified or eliminated. When we’re just trying to find what airlines fly from A to B, jetnav offers simpler results.
jetnav does seem slow for some of its searches from little airport to little airport, and for flights of more than one stop.
This looks like a promising tool – we’ll continue testing.

April 2008

From Wanderlust (UK) magazine's weekly email:
"The German town of Vreden has an unusual new tourist attraction – the world’s largest exhibition of used crisp packets. Snappily titled ‘Knack!’, the collection at the city’s Hamaland–Museum traces the history of the humble potato chip back to Incan times. The tasty 2,000-packet collection, hoarded by local man Bernd Sikora, is on display until 1 June."

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