Qantas & Tourism Northern Territory offer cheap flights to Australia’s Red Center

by Mike Barish on

Gadling loves Australia. We’ve been proponents of Americans visiting Oz for a while and I was fortunate enough to check out Australia’s Red Center last year. The added flights – and the costs of those flights – have often kept Americans from delving deep into the heart of this fascinating country. Now, however, Qantas and Tourism Northern Territory are partnering to make travel from America’s West Coast to Central Australia cheaper than ever.

Packages to Alice Springs, Darwin or Uluru (Ayers Rock) are only $999 from Los Angeles and San Francisco. Travel must be booked by January 26, 2010 and your visit to Australia will have to be between May 1 and June 8, 2010. You’ll want to spend a few weeks Down Under, so this five week window is more than enough time to explore the heart of Australia.

Qantas and Tourism NT are also partnering with local tour operators and hotels to offer deals for visitors. You can learn more on the Qantas Vacations website.

For more information on Australia’s Northern Territory, check out the series from my trip there last year.

It may seem like 2010 just started, but there’s no better time to plan your travel for the year than now!

Bring headphones – Airplane tip

by Gadling Staff on

Headphones are an absolute “must-have” when traveling on an airplane, for several reasons —

  1. On longer flights, it’s common to show a movie, and you probably want to hear it well.
  2. On other flights, the plane may have on-board games or on-demand music.
  3. Of course, you may bring your own pre-recorded music to help get away.
  4. The largest benefit, though, is simply to help cancel out “airplane noise.”

Airplanes can be very loud — for example, engines, crying babies, or a snoring aisle-mate can all make a flight more stressful. Headphones are an important accessory to help you relax, tune out the sounds, and pass the time.

An a pinch, you can always put headphones on to avoid a chatty seatmate (you don’t even need to turn on music to silence your talkative neighbor).

[Ed’s note: See all Gadling’s posts about headphones here.]

Is the body scanner hysteria getting a little out of hand?

by Grant Martin on

With terrorists now hiding bomb components in all corners of their bodies, we now find ourselves at a difficult impasse between more advanced, 3D scanning and passengers’ privacy. Pit the ACLU and the TSA against one another and one is guaranteed a lifetime of bureaucracy, litigation and name calling, nothing of which puts the traveler’s mind at ease.

Inflaming the situation are the mainstream media, left and right howling that these new generations of scanners can see right through you, with great erotic detail — and maybe even into your soul. And that’s when things start to go haywire. It’s true that there are a few different technologies available for 3D scanning, but will anything really show your buck-naked body to a nefarious TSA worker? Drudge Report and bild.de seem to suggest so, showing an attractive woman in full 3D detail on both of their sites.

Further complicating the matter is the buzz on the internet purporting that the negative of the exact same image reveals the person unclothed. The image above on the right was taken from Drudge this morning, while that below is the negative image as processed by Photoshop.

But is the above image real collected data? Not one other picture on the web from an x-ray or microwave scanner yields the same result, and most of them are so muddled and blurry (as a 3D microwave/x-ray scan should be) that it’s impossible to pick out fine details. Gadling’s friend and Photoshop expert proffered this alternative mechanism, suggesting the image is fake:

The girl was backlit, then they take the color out and blur the edges, and then invert the color. Either her top is skintight, or she wasn’t wearing clothes at all, and those were added in a separate layer.

Whether or not the image is manufactured or not, this whole concept of 3D scanning just needs to be accepted. More and more airports are installing the devices, which means at some point in your travel career, some sad TSA worker is probably going to see what’s going on under your sweater. Better start toning up with your Shake Weight now.

Head to the bulkhead – Airline tip

by Gadling Staff on

If you think all airline seats in the coach cabin are the same, you’re wrong. Bulkhead seats (the first row of the cabin) offer more space than others, and you can get them without spending extra money.

These seats offer extra room and are frequently left open by airlines for disabled passengers and their families. If you fall into one of those categories, head up to the counter as soon as you get to the gate and ask for those seats.

If no one in your party is disabled, still go to the counter and ask if the bulkhead seats have been claimed on your flight and if you can have one.

Editor’s Note: these seats won’t have space under them for stowage, so all bags must go in the overhead bins. If you’re a constant “belongings-checker,” these seats may not be for you. Also, the tray tables may be less useful than the normally un-useful tray tables, due to their design.

Stuff your shoes – Packing tip

by Gadling Staff on

Make use of the “dead space” within shoes by packing underwear, socks, or anything small inside them.

Shoes are bulky and take up precious suitcase space. However, this space shouldn’t be lost! To conserve even more space, chose underwear and socks made with lightweight fabric. Remember to roll underwear and socks tightly before placing them inside the shoe.

Also consider stuffing other smallish items — like batteries, phone charging cables, spare camera lenses, etc. — inside the shoe until it’s full.