Free airline tickets! The art of getting bumped

by Neil Woodburn on

When I’m in the airport waiting to board my plane, I always sit near the gate so that if the flight is overbooked I can volunteer to be bumped–for a price, of course. The regular going rate these days to bump a passenger is to offer up a free ticket to wherever the particular airline flies (usually within the contiguous United States if you happen to be in the USA).

Catching such a deal is usually just the luck of the draw. There is, however, a way to hedge your bet if you want to snag a free ticket: BumpTracker.com catalogs flights that were overbooked and details how many people were bumped and what compensation they received. The site is organized by airline but that’s the extent of it. It’s up to you to scour the flights to see if a pattern exists of which you might be able to take advantage. I noticed, for example, that flights from Reagan National Airport to Miami on United were consistently overbooked and volunteers bumped were given $300 in airline vouchers.

This, however, doesn’t do me any good unless I happen to live in Washington DC. The site needs to organize their search across all airlines based upon your airport of choice. Then I could search for the flights most likely to bump passengers and book one myself hoping to get bumped. That’s called hedging your bet, folks.

And if this all seems like too much work, be sure to check out Grant’s wonderful Guide to Getting Bumped which ran last week on Gadling. Grant gives the lowdown on everything you wanted to know about getting bumped and how to make the very best of the situation. I thought I was pretty cool with the above tricks, but Grant blows me out of the water.

24: The best way to tackle long flights

by Neil Woodburn on

I recently flew to China on one of those grueling trans-Pacific flights from Los Angeles.

If you ask me, 12 hours in a plane is one of the worst experiences on this planet.

But this time I was prepared.

Before leaving I went and rented the entire Season 3 of the hit action show, 24. I then spent nearly a week converting the DVDs to iPod format with a trusty program I purchased called Cucusoft iPod Video Converter Suite. The reason it took so long is because Cucusoft converts in real time. That meant running 24 hours of DVDs in, well, 24 hours.

When this was completed, I loaded all 24 episodes onto my video iPod. There was only one problem; a regular iPod battery would never last the whole 12-hour flight running videos. Thankfully I have an extended battery that came with my MyVu goggles that simply snaps into place around my video iPod.

From LA to Beijing I then watched 12 episodes back-to-back. This is such an exciting, engaging series in which most every episode ends in some type of cliffhanger, just begging you to keep watching. And I did. The flight passed extraordinarily quickly and by the time we landed I was all amped up on Jack’s adventures.

Of course, when you watch this show in real time it seems incredibly ridiculous that so much could happen in just 12 hours. But that certainly didn’t stop me from watching the last 12 hours on my way home two weeks later.

I’m sorry. You can’t take that board on board

by Jamie Rhein on

British Airways recently banned a few items from being checked as baggage. Surf boards are no longer permissible. They are too unwieldy, the airline says. Perhaps they are hard to pack in baggage with the rest of the sports equipment? But what if you packed it in a box? “No, that’s not a surfboard” you could insist, “It’s a. . .” I’m not sure what a surfboard packed in box might look like. An electric piano? An ironing board?

Skis are allowed, but those are thin. A bicycle is allowed. Those are bigger than surfboards. Maybe you could pack a surfboard in a bicycle box? Other banned items are windsurfing boards, javelins, poles for pole vaults and canoes. People actually check canoes? That’s wild.

When I left The Gambia at the end of my Peace Corps service, I got a ride to Dakar, Senegal with a man who was finishing his contract with US AID. He had his personal car with him and was shipping it home on the plane we were to take to New York. If a car could be allowed in baggage, what’s the problem with surfboard? Maybe he was teasing me about that car. I’m about as gullible as they come, but still, I don’t understand what’s wrong with a surfboard. Either does Mick Fanning, Australia’s top surfer. He’s signed a petition geared towards getting the surfboard ban lifted.

[via Jaunted]

**The photo was taken on the MRT in Singapore and posted on Flickr by Rick J.M. Verhoer. If Singapore, a country with rules upon rules, allows surfboards on its public transportation, what is up with British Airways?

Near-collision videos show need for updated airport safety technology

by Catherine Bodry on

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released dramatic animation of two runway near-collisions, in order to promote the need for improvements in runway safety. The re-creation was based on radar and flight data recorder information from the planes involved.

The video includes audio from an air traffic controller yelling “stop! stop! stop!” to a United plane as it begins to taxi onto a runway where a Delta flight is landing. The planes came within 230 feet of each other. In another situation, one plane lands while another is taking off on a perpendicular runway. The leaving flight is able to lift off early while the landing flight hit the breaks and stops in the middle of the runway. The planes avoided a collision by as little as 30 feet.

The animations were presented at the annual NTSB board meeting, where the agency reviews its most transportation safety concerns.

Read the full article and watch the video on CNN.com.

Dubai Air Show set to soar in the Emirate

by Abha Malpani on

It is easy to be oblivious to events happening in Dubai, simply because of the number of them happening throughout the year. Most of them are hyped in the media to give you nausea (e.g.GITEX), or they are events that you go to just to be seen (e.g.Dubai World Cup).

One exception is the Dubai Air Show. This year, it will be held from November 11-15 and will host: 850 exhibitors from over 50 countries;140 aircrafts on display across 117 indoor and outdoor pavilions, and a mind-blowing display of fighter planes zooming across the sky, making the event a dream come true for anyone remotely interested in the aviation industry.

Unless you are in the corporate sector, it’s actually quite hard to get hold of passes for the show — they are normally sold out in advance. This year (the 10th), the biannual show will run for the last time at the Airport Expo, and Diana Ross has been invited to perform at the gala dinner. However, unlike other events, unfortunately there is no raffle to win a plane yet (it’s normally easier with computers and cars), but I will not be surprised if they introduce that in the years to come.

In 2009, the air show will move to grounds of Dubai World Central — the US$33 billion, 14-square kilometer aviation hub currently under construction. When that happens, Dubai will yet again add another few superlative tags to its list as then it will be the world’s largest air show, and the aviation hub will be the world’s largest international airport.

[Via Gulf News]