Enjoy drinks on a flight? It’s going to cost you

by Jamie Rhein on

While you’re saving for your day of air travel, keep a few dollars tucked into your wallet. You’ll need them if you don’t want to be sucking like a guppy out of a fish bowl when you get to your destination.

The latest trend in the pay-as-you-go flight experience is to charge for drinks. So far, credit cards won’t cut it. It’s cash only.

On August 1, U.S. Airways will start charging $2 for soda, water, tea, juice and coffee and up the cost for alcoholic beverages from $5 to $7 to passengers flying economy class.

Oh, woe is me. There goes my “Could I have an orange juice, club soda AND coffee?” routine. As trends go, considering carriers have jumped on the charge for all checked bags scenario, I expect the drink charges will also follow suit.

Just great. I’ve been on this kind of flight before. It was called SkyBus, and we know how that airline turned out. We flew to Seattle from Columbus. Since our flights cost $330 a piece already, we didn’t spring for the drinks until the flight back. Then it was one tea and an orange juice. A few months later, on a Delta flight to California, I thought how hospitable it felt to be given something to drink. I even sprang for the wine.

It may not seem like a big deal to have to pay for drinks on a flight, but personally, with airlines acting like they are relatives to a discount grocery store, the kind that just opens cardboard boxes up to save on shelving costs, whatever excitement there was taking a flight is now gone. People shop at grocery stores where food is artfully displayed, partly for the experience.

Where drinks are concerned, particularly since you can’t take liquids through TSA and airport prices are expensive, I’d rather have $5 tacked to the price of a ticket and let me think I’m being treated like a welcome guest. Would you let guests come to your house and not even offer them water, particularly on a day when it’s 90 degrees outside?

I wonder if this coffee pictured here on my last flight from San Diego to Columbus was my last free drink? If I had known, I would have savored it more. As the trends are going, I’d rather take Greyhound for anything that will take me just a day to get there. [Read Washington Post article]

If you’re in the military you can drive a van onto a runway. At least at Sea-Tac.

by Anna Brones on

Last week in Seattle, retired Army lieutenant colonel Greg Alderete drove a van onto a runway tarmac at Sea-Tac airport. Alderete was supposed to be on the runway — he was picking up a general flying in from Portland — but what shocked him was that no one stopped to ask his name, check his ID, or search his vehicle. And you can’t make the excuse that he was dressed as a military officer; Alderete was in civilian clothes.

“We were sitting there, the engine idling, nobody around, when all of a sudden I realized: We’re out on the goddamn runway,” Alderete said. No inspection, no attention, and no screening made Alderete feel like there was a definite problem with the airport’s security, “with a van full of weapons we could have shut down the entire aviation system.”

Granted the colonel was picking up the general in the corporate jet area, where businessmen and government officials fly in and out of, but still, it makes you wonder just how tight airport security really is.

That was one crazy runway story. Check out these crazy airplane stories!

[Story via Boing Boing; image courtesy frischmilch]

Dalai Lama arrives in Seattle, his kind of town

by Iva Skoch on

The Dalai Lama arrived for a 5-day conference is Seattle on Thursday, NY Times reports. And, he’s going to be busy.

In addition to a Dave Matthews concert he is attending and a variety of other events, including an address at the University of Washington, he is to speak at Qwest Field, where the Seattle Seahawks play football. More than 50,000 people are expected there. It seems that the Dalai Lama is, like, totally mainstream in Seattle, dude.

Why is Seattle his kind of town? According to the NY Times article, spirituality and self-help sections in bookstores do well, neighborhood farmer’s markets thrive, and craigslist is the place to go this week if you want to buy tickets from scalpers to see the “simple monk” from Tibet. People move to the Northwest “to separate, to differentiate themselves from their families and their traditions,” said James K. Wellman Jr., an associate professor in the comparative religion department at the University of Washington in the NY Times article. “And then they get here, and there’s not many people, so there’s this sense of isolation. There’s an ambivalence about it. They both love it and they wonder, ‘Well, how can I connect?’ “

That theory could also explain why Seattle “invented” the coffee shop culture.

Have increasing travel costs affected your travels?

by Catherine Bodry on

I usually fly to Seattle three times a year — it’s where I’m from and where my family still lives so I try to make one trip in the spring, another in the fall, and a third for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. This year I was planning to fly down in April, but ticket prices have gone up $100 from last year. To give you some reference: when I first began flying to Anchorage in 1999, the average summer ticket was $250. That price slowly crept up to $350. Now the average is hovering around $450, though it’s possible to score the random ticket in the three-hundred-dollar range. And mileage tickets have gone up as well. It used to be easy to get a mileage ticket for 20,000 miles, but I can only find a 40,000-mile flight except for the worst dates and times.

Then, gas prices have gone up. It’s a 126-mile drive to the airport, so the cost of catching my flight has gone up considerably in the last couple of years as gas prices have risen.

The result of these higher prices for me is one less trip a year. Instead, I’ll try to make my fall trip longer than the usual long weekend. I didn’t think all the buzz about the cost of travel meant anything until I tried to buy my most recent ticket. I’m definitely bummed, but at those prices I can’t afford to be taking so many trips.

Has your travel been affected similarly?

Hotel deals for Leap Year birthday folks and their pals, goldfish included

by Jamie Rhein on

If you’ve looked ahead to February’s calendar page, you may have noticed the extra day tacked on. Yep, this is Leap Year. When I was talking about it with people earlier today, we wondered if that meant one extra day of work. It’s on a Friday this year.

For those folks who happen to have been born on February 29th and have identification to prove it, head to a Kimpton Hotel. There’s a deal with your name on it. Plus, this is the hotel company that provides you with a gold fish for your room. This goldie was hashcOde’s last September when he stayed at the Hotel Monaco in Seattle.

To those of us without this auspicious birthday date, we need to cozy up to someone who has it so we can get the discounts at one of these boutique hotels too. Maybe you’re one of those people whose dearest friend was born on February 29th. I don’t know anyone who was.

Even so, here is an overview of some of the cleverly packaged deals:

The Muse Hotel and 70 park avenue hotel are offering the “Forever Young” package. This includes a $229 per night rate, champagne and birthday cake.

At the Hotel Burnham and Hotel Monaco in Chicago, your February 29th birthday will get you 29% off on a two night minimum stay. (Thurs.-Sat.)

Leap Year folks can check into the Hotel Monaco and Hotel Vintage Plaza in Portland for a $29 for the night room rate on the night of February 29th. (I’m not sure what else this involves.)

For one free night stay, head to Washington D.C. There, at the all seven of the Kimpton Hotels, if you book two nights (Feb. 28 and March. 1) the 29th is free.

And, if someone is planning to propose to someone, the 29th is the day when there’s a deal for this too. In Denver at the Hotel Monaco, there’s the “Dare to Propose” package that includes a Leap Year themed cocktail.

All of the 29 Kimpton Hotels will have some Leap Year special. Here’s the link at the Kimpton Hotels Web site that lists all the properties and links to each one. As of now, I didn’t see all of the the deals I’ve mentioned, but we were tipped off by the company. There are other specials that are offered year ’round no matter what your birthday date. Perusing the Kimpton Web site is one way to imagine living the high-life. There are other deals for other occasions. I have an eye on the Dreams of a Muse at The Muse.