Dec 07 2015

I’m not an expert on guns. I don’t even own one. For this post I do not want to get into the question of which sorts of regulations of guns are reasonable or constitutional.

I do see a lot of very weak arguments being used in current debates. I’ll focus just on the very concerning one that the No Fly List ought to be used to deny substantive rights beyond flying. It’s a shoddy list as it is and raises significant concerns in the travel context. The last thing we should do is expand its use.

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Dec 07 2015

Chase no longer issues the co-brand Amtrak credit card. Alongside Amtrak’s new revenue-based loyalty program comes a new co-brand credit card partner, Bank of America.

As a result, today – December 7 – is the last day to transfer Chase points to Amtrak. Here’s how to think about whether to make a last minute transfer while you still can.

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Dec 07 2015

Saturday night’s United Shanghai – Newark flight, UA87, was delayed a couple of hours when a man (not identified, but speculated to be a professor at Southwest University of Finance and Economics) engaged in one of the most persistent self-upgrade schemes I’ve seen.

The man was apparently caught multiple times trying to seat himself in business class, and apparently stole champagne from up front and drank it walking through the aisles.

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Dec 07 2015

Hyatt is letting members know that Gold Passport systems will be down next Tuesday through Friday. But the details here are more significant than that. No redemptions while the systems are down, of course, but also points won’t start posting to accounts again until the week of December 28th. That means…

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Dec 07 2015

Silvercar starts accepting reservations at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport starting today for rentals beginning January 4.

There’s a Virgin America promotion code with Silvercar for $75 off a 2-day rental for first time Silvercar users, and Silvercar offers $25 to first-time renters who are referred by existing customers. Those work anywhere.

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Dec 06 2015

Luxury Travel Diary, a high-end travel blog with great reviews based in the UK, has a bunch of travel auctions — some about to close, others extend into October — and there look to be some real bargains.

They wanted to highlight some of these, and offered to help organize a giveaway of a 3 night stay in a 3-bedroom luxury apartment in London for readers of this blog. I suppose that folks who already know about these auctions don’t like this added attention, because frankly there aren’t enough bidders relative to the value of the offerings and some of these items go too cheap.

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Dec 06 2015

A Jordanian man traveling on a US passport on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Belgrade “cried out that he wished to join Allah along with all the passengers.”

Apparently he was demanding access to the cockpit. When that didn’t work he insisted he wanted to open the plane’s outer door. The man was overpowered by flight crew and the Serbian handball team.

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Dec 06 2015

A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.

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Dec 06 2015

The Kuwait Airways pilot who let a porn star play with his controls in the cockpit on a London – New York flight has lost his pilots license.

There’s been an epidemic of pilots getting fired for inviting female stars into the cockpit (or flight attendants). There’s usually at least an incriminating selfie, if not a video.

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Dec 06 2015

Since the TSA doesn’t actually catch prohibited items going through security checkpoints with any regularity, there are worries that pushing people through PreCheck lanes that haven’t been pre-vetted is problematic. (Although these worries require you to believe that regular security is more likely to catch problems.)

So the TSA has scaled back ‘managed inclusion’ so that TSA employees no longer pick people out of line to send them through PreCheck. Instead, only TSA dogs (as interpreted by TSA employees) do so.

With fewer people going through PreCheck lanes, TSA has cut back their hours. But if PreCheck is closed, you’re not out of luck. Here’s what to do.

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