Cell Phones

Stuck at the airport? My tips in the Hartford Courant

Art, Cell Phones, , ,

Had a nice talk with Jesse Leavenworth, a reporter from the The Hartford Courant, a while back about my favorite topic – airports with great amenities – and see that his article has hit the paper.

I chatted with Leavenworth about some of my favorite airports to spend time in – including San Francisco International Airport – SFO (great art and food choices in the Int’l Terminal), Oregon’s Portland International Airport– PDX (great shops and no sales tax), and Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport (a casino, lots of art, on-site museum, and loads more).

Leavenworth was especially pleased to hear me praise Schiphol, because his paper’s hometown airport, Hartford’s Bradley International Airport (BDL) has a direct flight to Amsterdam. Oops.. not any more.. Northwest Airlines just announced that it is dropping that route as of October 2.

Bradley still has loads to offer, including a free parking coupon for folks who sign up for the airport’s frequent-parker program and free Wi-Fi for all.

Last time I went through BDL, they were still displaying something truly unusual: three patch-sized embroidered scenes created by Raymond Materson to honor the 1994 Special Olympics. Materson was in prison when he made the patches and unraveled his socks to get the colored thread to use in his artwork. Once out of prison, Materson kept sewing. His work is now highly prized and displayed in museums and in art galleries.

Materson is currently in his first major overseas exhibit at the Compton Verney Gallery in Warwkickshire, England. To celebrate, he made this portrait of Queen Victoria and was kind enough to let me share it with you.

Courtesy and copyright: Ray Materson

Flying this summer? Take notes.

Cell Phones

cartoon_sad_airplane_ste_01.jpgNow that summer travel is in full swing, I bet Gregg Rottler will be getting lots of e-mail.

Rottler gathers tales of air travel woe and posts them, neatly and without editorial comment, on his Web site: Flights from Hell.com.

He does it partly to give frustrated travelers someplace to share some truly outrageous stories, but he also offers readers lots of “Wow, I’m glad-it-wasn’t-me” entertainment.

Story categories run the gamut from animals and babies (separate topics) to odors, weird people, and the ever-popular ‘reclining seats.”

Looking to the future, Rottler recently posted a link to some of my recent MSNBC.com Well-Mannered Traveler columns about in-flight cell phone use: a topic that may someday earn a spot on the Flights from Hell top-ten list.

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Votes on in-flight cell-phone service

Cell Phones, Well-Mannered Traveler

More than 2800 people have voted, so far, in the survey about in-flight cell-phone service that accompanies one of my recent Well-Mannered Traveler columns on MSNBC.

The results? 64% say “In-flight text and e-mail service is great, but please no phone calls!”

So I’m not that surprised at the results of a recent Harris survey conducted by Yahoo! on the same subject:

74% of the 2,000 consumers polled for that survey say “mobile phone usage on airplanes should be restricted to features that do not require talking.”

But never say never: The survey showed that “If usage of mobile phones was allowed while in-flight, more than two out of three (69 percent) consumers agreed that there should be a designated area of an airplane for passengers who want to talk on their mobile phones.”

For more numbers and details see the full Yahoo release.

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Cell-phones on airplanes. Good or bad? Vote!

Cell Phones

What does a World Bank economist flying to Morocco have in common with a young couple jetting home to Switzerland from Paris?

A fear of seat mates with cell-phones.

Air France is testing cell-phone service on one of its airplanes. I had a chance to fly on that plane last week and interviewed passengers about what they thought of that service.

Find out what they said in my Well Mannered Traveler column posted today on MSNBC.com and vote on whether or not you’d like to be able to make in-flight phone calls.

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