Track all flights

by Neil Woodburn on

Here’s a simple, handy website.

FlightAware tracks all flights currently in the air as well as those which have landed within the last 24 hours. All you need to do is plug in the airline and flight number, and up pops information detailing take-off time, landing time, speed, altitude, and aircraft type. A little map even displays the plane’s exact location.

While most people might want to use this service to figure out if a friend’s flight is arriving on time, I can think of two other cool uses:

1. Track the inbound airplane if you are delayed at your gate.
2. Find out exactly where you are while in the air. Of course, this would mean accessing the internet within the plane – something that’s not available right now, but soon will be.

Automated parking coming to Heathrow Airport

by Justin Glow on

Do you always forget where you parked your car?

I don’t remember where I came across this trick, but it’s come in useful several times: When parking somewhere — a mall, amusement park, or the airport, for instance — whip out your digital camera and take a picture of the location. Usually places with parking lots the size of small countries use some sort of number-letter categorization system to make it easier to remember where you parked, so just snap a picture of that A4 or G1 sign before you leave the area. Then, when you’re back and searching for your car, review the photo and find it right away. This is especially useful when leaving your car in long-term airport parking.

Britain’s Heathrow airport is unveiling a new terminal in March which will include an automated parking system. Engadget writes,

“A new automated system in the garage will snap a photo of your license plate as you head in, direct you to a space using illuminated arrows and an infrared camera tracking system, then issue a ticket which can be read at a kiosk when you get back. When you insert the stub into the reader, a digital display shows you a 3D map of the carpark, and points you to the exact location of your vehicle.”

Wow, this makes my digital camera trick look pretty lame.

TSA warns screeners of its own tests

by Catherine Bodry on

The Transportation Security Administration is so committed to air travel safety that it’s conducting tests at airport security checkpoints. The only problem? During at least one test, the Administration warned its screeners that a test was under way, and even provided details of undercover agents. The TSA sent out an email to more than a dozen recipients warning that security testing by the FAA and Department of Transportation was under way.

And the email got detailed: the Associated Press reports that the e-mail “relayed an alert that described a couple who were testing security. The woman is white but has ‘an oriental woman’s picture’ on her identification card, it stated. ‘They will print a boarding pass from a flight, change the date, get through security (if not noticed) and try to board a flight and place a bag in the overhead.'”

The TSA won’t comment on the incident, and emphasizes its commitment to safety.

[via Msnbc]

The Amazing Race 12, Episode 2 recap

by Martha Edwards on

It’s Episode 2 of season 12 of The Amazing Race and the show starts out with teams starting to leave at (ugh) 12am. Their mission? To get to Amsterdam as quickly as possible. First we watched them as they drove to the Shannon airport, and I got a good laugh at the two blonds, Shanna and Jennifer — first they commented on how difficult the race is because, like, oh my god, they haven’t been able to get a manicure. Then the one driving couldn’t figure out how to turn on her highbeams, so she had to hold down the lever the whole time because it was obviously busted. “Unless I’m an idiot …“, she says. Um, no comment. Also, on the way to the airport, Donald and Nick (Grandpa and Grandson) got a flat tire. Poor guys.

Once the teams made it to the airport, all but Mariana and Julia made it onto the first flight to Dublin. From there, six teams made it onto the flight to Amsterdam, with Ronald and Christina and Nick and Donald vying to make it on standby. Both were at side-by-side ticket booths and while Ronald made sure to be polite, Nick didn’t extend the same courtesy and was a bit crass. But it paid off — Nick and Donald made it onto the flight, but the ended up getting a *very* stern talking to from Ronald. Ouch. But the moral of the story? Rude works.

A word about Ronald. He was hard to watch this week, if you ask me — he was constantly lecturing or criticizing his daughter when he could have been doing something productive like, um, I don’t know, the task at hand? I think it was mentioned that he is in sales and I can see that — he doesn’t seem to ever stop talking. He describes himself as optimistic with real truth flavour, but I would call him nitpicky. However, I loved his shirt — it read ‘Who’s your daddy.‘

Once they got to Amsterdam, the groups headed to a bridge (didn’t catch the name of it) and encountered a detour. They got to chose between rigging complicated knots and hoisting furniture up to a fourth-floor window of a Dutch house, or combing through thousands of bikes to find two with specific colours, then riding them to the next clue. It was pretty well divided — half the teams chose the furniture and half chose the bikes. Shanna, one half of team blond, did a pretty impressive job on the rope-rigging and furniture hoisting, I must say, as did Vyxsin (I’ve noticed that she usually does the physical work on team Goth. Not that there’s anything wrong with that — just sayin’ … )

After they completed this task, they headed to a rural area where they encountered a roadblock. One team member had to pole vault across a muddy bog to retrieve the next clue. This was by far my favourite part of the show — it was like watching some Japanese blooper reel, since so many people fell into the muddy water. I got the most satisfaction out of seeing Jennifer of Jennifer and Nathan fall butt-first into the canal on her first try — her constant banshee-like shrieking at Nate is really starting to get on my nerves. I felt bad for Grandpa Donald because he had such a hard time with it, but he did provide some comic relief by stripping down to his ginch. Kynt was very hesitant to vault across the pond — afraid to ruin his makeup or muddy his fishnet arm thingies, hmmm?

Next up, teams had to ride to the pit stop, Durgerdam. Well, to be precise, one team member peddled and one rode in a big bin in front. Vyxsin, of course, did the peddling, until she got fed up and insisted Kynt do it. Jennifer and Nate’s ride was, as expected, filled with more shrieking, interlaced with dirty talk about other teams — she called Shanna a ‘little b***h’ for being a better pole vaulter.

Lorena and Jason made it first and each won themselves a speedbike. Jennifer and Nate were second, followed by Jennifer and Shanna in third and Kynt and Vyxsin in fourth. Kate and Pat were last, and though they weren’t my favourites, I felt kind of sad for them because they were one of the only teams this episode that seemed to be getting along and enjoying the journey.

All in all, I was thoroughly entertained by this episode — there was a great balance between drama and comedy. Your thoughts?

(All photos from The Amazing Race Official Website)

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.