The W South Beach has taken down a piece of art inspired by the image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara after it upset some in the Cuban exile community. The work by British artist Gavin Turk was taken down from the W South Beach on Tuesday. It featured Turk’s own face but with the scraggly beard, beret and revolutionary garb worn by Guevara in a now iconic 1960 photograph by Alberto Korda. W Hotels want to be cool, and for some reason I’ve never quite managed to fathom (probably because I’m decidedly uncool), Che Guevara is ‘it’ with the trendy set. A year ago Mercedes-Benz was associating itself with Guevara, too. Che Guevara: Helped set up Cuba’s secret police and forced labor camps Was responsible for the execution of thousands of political prisoners Tortured prisoners (this…
About Gary Leff
With Apologies to My Seatmate: What Science Says About Passing Gas on a Plane
Flying does produce gas. The study concluded that anecdotal evidence that flying increases flatulence is not hot air, finding that changes in air pressure at altitude result in the gut producing more gas. …The result was an in-depth review of scientific literature on flatulence, looking at issues such as whether women’s farts smell worse than men’s (yes), what causes the odour (sulphur) and how often the average person passes wind every day (10). The authors note that pilots in particular shouldn’t distract themselves by trying to hold it in — though they run the risk of distracting their colleagues in the cockpit which isn’t ideal, either. Interestingly, the effects of flatulence are worse in first class on airlines that still use leather seats than they are in economy. They did, however, note that the textile…
US Airways Mastercard Signup Bonus Changes (For The Worse, But How You Can Still Benefit)
Just off a long haul flight and recovering from jetlag, I read that the US Airways Mastercard ‘standard’ offer (that I have a referral link for) has changed from offering 40,000 miles after first purchase to only offering 30,000 miles after first purchase. I didn’t get any notice of the change, and when you go to the offer you might even think you were still getting the previously offered 40,000 miles. I only post the link so you can see detail on this yourself, and while I do think it’s worth getting the US Airways Mastercard I do not think you should use this link. In order to get the full 40,000 miles with this offer you would have to do a balance transfer and at a cost that is absolutely not worth it. Instead,…
Another Bucket List Sale: New York to the Galapagos in Business Class for $1338
The Points Guy blogged about a current business class deal from Dallas to Buenos Aires and from New York JFK to Guayaquil for a hair under $1000. Both excellent buys compared to usual pricing, both available on a combination of American Airlines and LAN. While I should probably have a greater appreciation for the largest city in Ecuador, Guayaquil as such doesn’t hold much interest for me. But I started playing around and found that you can include an add-on to Baltra Island (the Galapagos) as part of the ticket. Those segments are all-economy, and it’s basically just buying the Guayaquil special fare plus a regular ticket to and from Baltra, but much more convenient for connecting straight through than separate tickets. And that makes this deal really attractive, to me at least. So after…
Buy a Netbook for $31 ‘Net’
Reader John T. passes along this deal on the Acer C7 Google Chrombook. It’s a very basic stripped down netbook that costs $199. This seems a fair review. But they give you (12) Gogo wireless internet day passes which sell for $14 each. So if you would be buying inflight internet day passes anway, you’re effectively buying this netbook for $31 plus shipping. Surely it has to be worth that price, or could be eBayed for more. Or it might be a good deal if you were keeping the Acer C7 and unloading the gogo wireless internet pass codes. Thus this deal may be useful to some. And of course my Staples sells Google Play gift cards. So one could earn 5 points per dollar buying this to boot..! Update: Readers in the comments suggest…
How to Deal With Crying Children on an Airplane
I’ve stirred up some controversy in the past complaining about ill-behaved children on airplanes. But my position is simple. I don’t complain about babies and small children. I complain about parents who are clearing abdicating responsibility for those children. I’m not talking about sometimes it’s just hard, and parents getting frustrated while trying. I’ve written about incidents where children run into first class from coach and take electronics away from other passengers (strangers)… and the parents coming up and simply watching the child play somebody else’s video games while saying and doing nothing. And I’ve written about parents seated in different rows sending their children running between them through the aisles, with the child’s screams getting louder with each trip (I understand the desire to tire the child out, but reeaallly?) My frustrations are with…
Operational Excellence at Delta
Delta’s blog features an infographic (that you need to be logged into Google to see it seems) that they call ‘the anatomy of the 99.5%’ — their operation completed 99.5% of flights and nearly an 87% on-time rating. That’s real operational excellence across nearly 1.9 million flights transporting over 160 million passengers in 2012. I give a tremendous amount of grief to the Delta Skymiles program — from the usability of miles, to their upgrade policies, to a general air of deception and disingenuousness. But as an airline they run a pretty good operation, with more inflight internet than any other carrier and good seatback entertainment. Their infographic tells the story of that operation in 2012. (HT: TravelBloggerBuzz)
Bucket List: $1000 Business Class Fares New York to Easter Island
Lots of folks emailed me last night, and I see that One Mile at a Time has already written about it. (Although availability isn’t looking as good to me as what he was seeing several hours ago.) Here’s a same search using ITA Software’s Matrix to identify dates and itineraries that will price out at this fare. I then get this calendar of available dates and fares: And then this is a sample of an available itinerary: Key elements of the fare: This is valid for travel commending on or after April 1 and must commence by June 12. Travel is permitted Monday through Thursday. 14 day advance purchase required. 2 stopovers are permitted – the first one free and the second for $125 — in Miami, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles It’s a…
Freddie Awards Voting is Now Open!
The Freddie Awards are in their 25th year of representing the voice of the frequent traveler, honoring the best in airline, hotel, and credit card loyalty programs during the previous year. Now is your chance to vote for your favorite programs, the ones you believe did the best job for their members in 2012. You’ll be among more than 1,000,000 frequent flyers expressing their collective voice. And sponsors of the Freddies also provide opportunities to engaged, high-value customers that are casting their ballots. Check out the special offers when you complete your ballot. I’ve had the great honor of serving as Chair of Nominations for the Freddies, so I’ve been in touch with leadership at scores of frequent flyer programs over the past couple of months preparing for this. And as a co-founder of the…
Don’t Panic! The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the US Airways-American Merger
Here’s what I told Conde’ Nast’s Daily Traveler — that essentially we don’t know enough yet to have any basis for worry. The frequent-flier programs of US Airways and American will also merge, bringing the AAdvantage membership to a whopping 100 million members after it absorbs US Airways’ program. But considering that the airline is going to be bigger too, miles expert Gary Leff (a top travel specialist and a contributor to CondeNastTraveler.com), doesn’t think that number is out of proportion. “It’s only about 10 to 15 percent bigger than United’s program, and probably 30% bigger than Delta’s,” he says. How will the union affect fliers? Leff lays out the pros of each program as it stands now: “US Airways doesn’t seem to have as many elite members as the rest of the legacy airlines,…
