Air Travel

All the latest articles about Air Travel

WestJet offers hands-free Clapper technology

04/01/10
Here’s an interesting idea: Today WestJet announced that it is introducing Clapper technology on board its aircraft that will allow guests to operate amenities such as lights and live seatback television, simply by clapping their hands. “Made popular on television in the mid-1980s, Clapper technology is making an in-flight comeback thanks to the addition of →

Airports – and now airlines – trash talking each other

03/27/10
For my At the Airport column on USAToday.com this month, Airport wars escalate with attack ads aimed at rivals, I wrote about a new YouTube video about San Francisco International Airport, that features cameo appearances by SF  Mayor Gavin Newsom and Marion & Vivian Brown, the kooky 83-year-old identical twins who have become beloved San →

Souvenir Sunday: 22-foot tall candles and tiny Lego pilots

03/21/10
I spent the last few days poking around Oregon’s Mt. Hood territory, stopping in small towns with ‘wonder what’s there’ names such as Boring, Rhododendron, Happy Valley, ZigZag and Damascus. Visiting Damascus was a special treat, because out in front of the Damascus Fire Station there’s a 22-foot-tall candle. For years, this was just an →

Airport smackdown: it’s “gloves off” when dissing rivals

03/17/10
My “At the Airport” column for USAToday.com this week – Gloves are off as airports go after their rivals in ads – is about airports rolling out funny, “in your face” campaigns. In a video about San Francisco International Airport, Mayor Gavin Newsom has a cameo. So do Marion and Vivian Brown, the kooky 83 →

Travel contests: you can’t win if you don’t play

03/15/10
Traveling is expensive. Especially if you want to eat and sleep when you get somewhere. So we’ll start the week off with two contests you many want to enter to help subsidize an adventure. AirTran Airways has a Facebook-linked sweepstakes encouraging students to become a “Facebook creeper,” which they describe as someone who “crawls Facebook, →

Souvenir Sunday: Amelia Earhart luggage

03/14/10
Earlier this week, while waiting for Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger’s presentation at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, I spent some time in the Amelia Earhart exhibit.  And while I don’t think I’ll take up flying my own plane anytime soon, I keep thinking about getting some new luggage. Amelia Earhart endorsed a long →

Skip the TSA routine with these flying experiences

03/11/10
Getting to the airport, going through the security line, and waiting with a herd of other travelers to board a plane takes all the fun of out of air travel, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you rather get right to the thrilling part – flying? For a story that went live on Bing Travel today, I found →

Capt. Sullenberger and Amelia Earhart at the Museum of Flight

03/09/10
Monday evening I was fortunate to be in the audience at Seattle’s Museum of Flight for a  presentation by the recently retired Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the now-legendary pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 who was able to successfully land a plane in New York City’s Hudson River. He began the evening by showing the NTSB’s →

Tidbits for travelers: art in AUS & PHX

03/04/10
“Travel/Places,” a new exhibit at Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) combines hand-scripted, journey-related quotes with illustrations of places traveled.  10 members of Austin’s Capital City Scribes contributed 12 works to this exhibit, which includes a piece by Abigail Hutchison incorporating the travel quote attributed to Saint Augustine: “The world is a book and those who →
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