Philly no longer top spot for airline hotel hookers

by Tom Johansmeyer on

It’s not often a worker at the airport makes you feel good … and it seems like the party’s over for the good people passing through the City of Brotherly Love.

The police ended the fun by arresting nine people this week. They’re being called a “prostitution ring,” but that just seems so negative. Rather, they appear to me to be dedicated to putting smiles on faces in airport hotels.

When’s the last time you smiled in an airport?

So, while we know it’s an airport hotel, we don’t know which one is hooker-heaven: the police are holding back the details. For frequent business travelers, however, this shouldn’t pose a big problem: just stay at a different one on each trip through. Eventually, you’ll find someone to help you turn that frown upside down!

Can you identify a prostitute? USA Today wants to know! Head over to the original story and let them know if you’re savvy enough to pick up the key signs.

[photo by Rodrigo Favera via Flickr]

Stench in newly renovated San Jose terminal building compared to outhouse

by Scott Carmichael on

The newly renovated terminal A complex at Norman Mineta airport in San Jose has a bit of a smelly problem. For months, staff have been complaining about an unbearable stench in office areas and the crew break room.

The smell is so bad, that odor neutralizing machines and large fans have not helped. So bad in fact, that the airport purchased picnic tables so the staff could escape the stench and sit outside during their lunch break.

Nothing the airport tried in the past five months has helped, so now airline officials are threatening to withhold thousands of dollars in rent payments until the airport operator fixes the situation.

Continental Airlines general manager Urban Grass (awesome name) said “it’s got to be resolved somehow.” The smell has stunk up his accounting area and employee break room, and that the sewage smell in the United and US Airways offices down the hall is “horrible.”

Like everything in the airline industry, everyone is very concerned about the issue, but continues to point fingers at someone else when searching for a guilty party.

The only upside is that passengers are not affected by the stench, and no baggage is flying home infused with the smell of San Jose sewage.

[Photo credit: Flickr/Andrew Feinberg]

JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater tries to turn 15 minutes into 20

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Okay, so you know by now that Steven Slater has hired a heavy-hitter publicist. The JetBlue flight attendant who grabbed some road beer before popping the emergency slide and driving for freedom in Queens clearly can’t go back to his old job, so he’s looking for some alternatives. There is talk of reality show action, but Howard Bragman, the big name representing Slater, notes that they have some … ummm, legal … matters to get out of the way first.

Bragman has some experience with Slater’s ilk, having rep’ed such “instant celebrities”, according to The Hollywood Reporter, as Monica Lewinsky and Oksana Grigorieva. He took Slater as a client because he believes he could stretch his 15 minutes of fame to more. Of course, Bragman is so much more than a publicist to Slater: “So I’m doing the media relations and also acting as manager.”

Before he starts pitching books and TV shows, of course, Bragman explains, “Our first job is to handle these very serious criminal charges against Steve and then to get as good a resolution as possible. After the criminal charges are handled, we’re going to evaluate things.”

%Gallery-99568%

What’s interesting, of course, is that publicist seems to be about as engaged with reality as client. In regards to the “very serious criminal charges”, Bragman says of Slater, “He’s handling the situation with intelligence and humor and integrity.”

What everyone wants to know, though, is whether the offers are rolling in. Apparently, there’s been a “huge array of things”, says Bragman, who won’t go into specifics. Apparently, being a flight attendant isn’t among them. He’s backing off Slater’s earlier claims that he wanted his old gig back. Dancing around the question about whether Slater wants to come back to the cabin, the famous publicist laments what it’s like to fly today:

Then, of course, there’s the whole airline experience today. Steven said to me, “I used to supply Chateaubriand for people going to Europe on TWA, and now I throw a bag of Cheetos at someone who can’t be bothered to take a shower before they get on an airplane.”

What’s most important to Bragman, though, is that he feels Slater’s fame has legs, though I think he means “with the right representation.” I suspect thinking about his future fees, Bragman says:

I think he’s an interesting character, and I don’t think America knows him. I think they’re going to like this guy. He’s very charming and very intelligent. I think there is real potential in him, but that’s secondary. Our first responsibility is the charges. If I didn’t believe in this guy, I wouldn’t be here.

Justin Glow and Rolf Potts embark on round the world trip — with no bags

by Grant Martin on

Two of our favorite people in the world, Gadling editor-at-large Justin Glow and travel writer and personality Rolf Potts are teaming up on a wild project starting this week, traveling around the entire planet with absolutely no baggage.

The journey begins this morning on a flight between Kansas and New York City, where the team will be spending two days prior to their departure to London, Paris, Morocco, Cairo, Johannesburg, Bangkok, Singapore, Queenstown and Auckland, to name a few places, all with nothing more than the gear loaded in their SCOTTeVEST clothing and various and sundry camera equipment.

“Why?” you might ask? It’s partially to show the ease and fluidity of travel when unburdened (figuratively and literally) by luggage and it’s also a challenge. A challenge about making compromises on the road, pushing their gear to the limits and keeping cool while traversing the planet in one set of britches.

Rolf will be the pointman for the operation, and you’ll be able to see dispatches from his sexy gourd in both video and words every day over at rtwblog.com. Justin, the (no less sexy) camera and logistics man will deal with all things technical and with getting the dispatches updated. Along the way, they may even have a few visitors swing through.

Keep an eye out for updates as the weeks pass by and try to contain your jealousy. It sounds like a fantastic trip.

Gadling test drives new search engine Hipmunk.com

by Grant Martin on

The new buzz on the internets this week is all about a new fare booking site called Hipmunk, a catchy, minimalist little site with a unique way of presenting fares.

Founded by the co-founders of Reddit (Steve Huffmann) and BookTour (Adam Goldstein), Hipmunk brings a unique, fresh way of looking at fare data unlike the old tabular model. Timing and duration are stressed, so a list of fares on each airline as a function of departure and length are presented in a series of parallel, colored bars.

In this way, passengers can easily see when they depart, how long they’ll be traveling, where they have layovers and when they arrive. Sorted against price, one can easily pick the lowest priced ticket against the that with the shortest travel time. Lower ranking fares under the best conditions per airline are folded under each line.

One can also sort fares by number of stops, duration or agony and then continue searching.

Once users have found a reasonable itinerary, they can click on their favorite fare and then carry over to Orbitz for finalized booking.

And only Orbitz, mind you. Why is this an issue? Well, we don’t know exactly where Hipmunk’s fare data comes from (their FAQ says that they’re not owned by an online travel agent), but if they’re only monetizing through Orbitz then they’re only limited to fares that Orbitz displays. And as we all know, Orbitz doesn’t necessarily always display the lowest possible fare. Coincidentally, however, the online travel agent does provide the industry highest return for each referred and purchased ticket, $3 versus $2 for Travelocity.

Running a quick search for an upcoming itinerary from ORD-CDG that we’ve got on the calendar, the proof is in the pudding. Hipmunk returns an (Orbitz available) $823 for roundtrip fare, while metacrawler Kayak (that actually queries aerlingus.com) returns $796.

This isn’t to say that Hipmunk’s model is broken — their interface is lovely and the amount of returned data is simply outstanding — they just need to expand their dataset for searching and monetization. Until this happens, we recommend using at least a few different engines in addition to your current searches on Hipmunk.