Daily deal – Tumi yearly clearance sale – up to 50% off

by Scott Carmichael on

My daily deal for today is for the yearly clearance sale in the Tumi luggage store. Tumi makes some pretty classy (and usually quite expensive) luggage, but it is the kind of stuff that can survive almost any kind of abuse you throw at it.

I’ve been pulling the same Tumi rolling suitcase around the airport since 2000, and while it may look like it’s been to hell and back, it’s still solid as a rock.

Of course, solid as a rock means it comes with a pretty hefty price tag. A “normal” Tumi rolling case will cost between $400 and $750, but the yearly sale event is the one time a year you can pick up some very nice pieces of luggage for as little as $100. Some of the highlights in the sale are the expandable rolling suiter pictured above, or this fantastic hard shell rolling case for just $175.

Expensive luggage is not for everyone, but if you are like me, and you are not very nice to your bags, then it is a great investment in something that will last for many years. The sale lasts till January 31st, but items may start selling out pretty soon.

Daily deal – 5 piece Springfield luggage set at Macy’s for $49.99

by Scott Carmichael on

We are now a little too close to Christmas to rely on online orders and shipping, so my daily deal for today is available online and instore.

This “Springfield” luggage set is available at Macys.com and most Macy’s retail stores. The set usually retails for $200, but is currently on sale for just $49.99.

Included in the 5 piece set are 3 rolling suitcases, a beauty case/tote and a travel accessories bag.

The set is available in red and blue. The rolling bags feature a full steel frame construction, and all bags are made of high density polyester.

As always with luggage like this, I would not recommend it for the frequent flier, but if you only take the occasional trip, it should work out just fine.

You’ll find the luggage set here, which is where you’ll also find the instore inventory locator.

(Via: Fatwallet.com)

Man Caught at Airport with 200 Birds in his Suitcase

by Josh Lew on

A man was arrested at the airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil after 200 canaries were found in his suitcase. The smuggler is a resident of Brazil and had just gotten off a flight from Peru. Over 60 of the birds were dead. The others are being returned to Peru by a more humane means of transport. The man has been charged with animal trafficking and is currently being held by police in Sao Paulo.

The birds were found after a routine x-ray at a security checkpoint. They were stuffed into 4 cages inside a large suitcase. The deceased birds had succumbed to suffocation and dehydration.

Of more interest to authorities was the fact that the particular species of canary is considered invasive and would have posed a threat to similar birds native to Sao Paulo. Exotic bird smuggling is a huge problem worldwide. Not only are certain birds endangered or considered a threat to local wildlife, there is a risk of viruses and diseases, like H5N1, spreading because of the illegal importation of exotic birds.

Galley Gossip: Flight Attendant Pet Peeve #4 – Turn around, go that way!

by Heather Poole on

“Hello. How are you? Welcome aboard,” I say, and I say this as I’m standing between first class and coach while passengers board the airplane and slowly make their way down the aisle. That’s when I spot you standing at your row with your bag sitting on an aisle seat as you stare up at the overhead bin, a full overhead bin, and shake your head.

“Hello. How are you? Welcome aboard,” I say, as you continue staring into the full overhead bin above your seat, and as you stare, still shaking your head, I already know what you’re going to say before you even say it, and while I wait for you to say it, I continue to greet the passengers during the boarding process. “Hello. How are you? Welcome aboard.”

Though I can’t make out the words, I see you’re talking to those seated around you, pointing aggressively at your seat, at the overhead bin, back at your seat again, and as you begin to make a scene, a very loud one, you turn and look at me.

“Hello. How are you? Welcome aboard,” I say, and as I say this, I’m thinking to myself, here we go, and I’m wondering, as I’ve wondered thousands of times before, why you can’t just turn around and put the bag inside the empty overhead bin behind you, the one located three rows back. You see it. I see it. We all see it. So why don’t you use it? You can use it, ya know.

Waving your hands in the air at me, you say, “Excuse me, Miss! Can you help me!”

Of course. I slide in behind a passenger and slowly make my way down the aisle. You look very concerned, so I smile at you, but you don’t smile back. You never do. Now this is about to go one of three ways, depending on how often you fly…

YOU RARELY FLY: “There are bags in MY overhead bin!”

YOU FLY A COUPLE TIMES A YEAR: “Can you help me find a place for my bag?”

YOU’RE A FREQUENT FLIER: “Can I put my bag up there?” (pointing to first class)

ME: “I’m sorry,” I always say, no matter how often you fly, because I am, truly, sorry – sorry I have to say sorry all day long! “But you’re going to have to use the bin three rows back.” I point at the bin. “I’d grab it quick before someone else does.” Now the next thing I’m going to say depends on how often you fly, and usually goes something like this..

YOU RARELY FLY: Look, I know it’s frustrating when the overhead bin above your seat is full, but the overhead bin space is shared space. That means anyone can use it. You. Him. Her. Everyone. Yes, you bought the seat below the bin, but you did not buy the bin.

YOU FLY A COUPLE TIMES A YEAR: If I could move some things around I would, but the bin is completely full already and there’s no way your bag is going to fit. I know it’s not fair! Particularly if you’ve only brought on-board one small bag, which I see is the case, but I can’t go POOF and make all the other bags disappear now can I?

YOU’RE A FREQUENT FLIER: There’s no need to show me your frequent flier card. Trust me, I already know you’re a VIP, which is why you’re sitting in the bulkhead row in the first place. You know as well as I do that first class is full (or else you’d be sitting there) and I can’t let you use that empty bin, not when we’re still waiting for a few first class passengers to board. Now I’m pretty sure you already know why, but since you’re still arguing with me I’ll spell it out. Because when you spend that kind of money to sit in first class, like you normally do, you expect to find an empty bin when you come on-board, too.

Ridiculous, my least favorite word a passenger can say, has just been used, and as that word is spat at me I see something happen that I knew was going to happen. Someone has just thrown their bags, two of them, into the empty overhead bin three rows back.

Now it is I who shakes my head, because you, dear passenger, will have to walk five rows back to get your bag into a bin, and as I tell you this, I continue shaking my head, and of course I add the word, “Sorry.” I’m always sorry.

“I’ll hold up the airplane when we land in order to get my bag out of the overhead bin five rows back!” exclaimed a passenger, a passenger who is also MY HUSBAND, a frequent flier I met on an airplane, after I had told him about what I was writing.

Completely appalled, I visualized the man I would NOT have married if I’d have seen him acting like that. “You’re kidding, right?”

Nope. He, the husband, a frequent flier I met in business class on a flight from Los Angeles to New York somewhere over Illinois, assured me he was not joking. And here I agreed to go out with the guy in the first place because I thought he was a nice passenger. Just when you think you know a person, they have to go and freak out over an overhead bin.

And so…after discussing the sensitive overhead bin topic quite thoroughly with the not so nice passenger / husband, I have concluded that if he had not been able to get his bag into a bin near his seat I probably would not agreed to meet him at the Starbucks located across the street from our layover hotel seven years ago. Which means we would not have had our beautiful baby boy a little over two years ago. Which means that my life, as I know it, would have turned out totally different.

“And I love my life,” I read out loud. It was the very last line of this post, and I wanted to know what the husband, who was now looking at me funny, thought.

“I never said I’d hold up the airplane!” he exclaimed, even though he most certainly did say that and I remember exactly when and where he said it – on the couch, during a commercial break at 9:15pm, two nights ago.

Okay so perhaps the man was hallucinating when I first read him this post. Or maybe he was just having a bad day. Taking it out on me and my overhead bin post. Who knows? All I know is I’m glad to he wouldn’t hold up the deplaning process in order to get his precious bag. He travels a lot. Over 100,000 miles a year. And flight attendants know he’s mine! Which means I can now go back to work and not worry about what the husband is doing on the airplane while I’m working another flight, standing between coach and first class saying, “Hello. How are you? Welcome aboard.”

Now that you’re curious about the other flight attendant pet peeves, click the following links:

Galley Gossip: Ma’am, is that a frying pan in your bag?

by Heather Poole on

“Ma’am,” said the TSA agent as he stared at the screen in disbelief.

I gulped. Oh no, here we go, I thought, as I stood in line and watched him sitting on the stool inspecting my bag on the screen in front of him. I smiled a friendly smile and tried to act nonchalant, as if I hadn’t been dreading this moment all day. Man, I knew this was going to happen!

The TSA agent looked at me, and back at the screen. “Is that a frying pan in your suitcase?”

“Yes, sir, that is, in fact, a frying pan in my bag,” I laughed.

All I could do was laugh. Not only had my grandpa given me a cast iron skillet (or two – okay three!), earlier that morning, he’d also given me a pound of potatoes from his garden in Texas. Luckily I found all the items he’d hidden in my bag before leaving for the airport. I only kept one cast iron skillet, and in my defense, it was the smallest one.

“Is everything okay?” I asked the TSA agent as he looked over his shoulder and made eye contact with another agent.

Guess not. Because now there were three agents surrounding the screen. They whispered amongst themselves and studied the frying pan with great intensity. It’s just a frying pan, I wanted to say, but didn’t, because now all three of them were looking at me. I, of course, just smiled and held my breath. Normally, in this kind of situation I’ll crack a joke, say something silly about cooking eggs for the crew, but this time I kept my mouth shut.

NOTE: Always – ALWAYS – keep your mouth shut when TSA is inspecting your bag. And do whatever they say. Whether you like it or not.

It seemed like an eternity before the backup agents walked away from the screen. The one left sitting on the stool just shook his head and didn’t say another word as the conveyor belt started to move again. When my suitcase popped out on the other side I thanked the guy and went on my merry way. That was close. Maybe a little too close.

TSA, I’m sure, has seen it all. And then some! I mean if I’m hauling a frying pan across the country, I wonder what other people are packing in their bags. It got me thinking.

“Excuse me,” I said to a TSA agent standing beside me at the Wendy’s counter at La Guardia airport last week. I had just ordered an iced tea, a little treat before starting a killer three-day trip flying in and out of Miami. (I still don’t know what I was doing on that trip.) After explaining to the TSA agent I was in the process of writing a post about weird things people pack, I went on to ask, “What strange things have you seen on the job?”

As the TSA agent reached for a bag of food, the words, “Nothing too strange,” were mumbled.

“Really?” I said. Now I was completely disappointed. Certainly this person had seen something! I handed a tired looking cashier lady two dollars and grabbed my drink. “I’m surprised to hear that.”

As I punched a straw through the plastic lid, I almost didn’t hear the agent mumble, “Well, there was a lady last week who…”

I spun around. “Who what? Tell me!”

“Kept setting off the security machine. We couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally we had to take her aside and that’s when she told us she was wearing a remote controlled (the following two words are my words – not the TSA agent’s words) body massager.”

My mouth dropped open and my eyes had to be bugging out of my head. “A what!”

“In her underpants,” the agent said matter of fact, as if this kind of thing happened daily, before heading back to work.

Now I’ve never seen anything like that before, and I hope I never do, but once, while flying an international trip, I did happen upon a very strong senior mama carrying two rollaboards down a flight of stairs where the crew van awaited on the tarmac in London.

“Are you a commuter?” I asked eying both bags, one in each hand, as I stood feeling so teeny tiny beside a gigantic 767.

“No, sweetie, this is my Cappuccino maker,” the flight attendant said, nodding at the bag on the right. “I make coffee for the crew in the mornings in my room. You’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”

And I did join in for coffee the next morning, since our layover rooms did not have coffee makers. Just tea pots. We were in London, remember? Thirteen years later I can say that toting a coffee maker across the ocean is not the norm. However, it’s not-not the norm either, because when relaying this story to another flight attendant she laughed and said, “What about flight attendants who bring their sewing machines with them on their layovers?”

Apparently we have a hat maker amongst our ranks.

While I’ve never met the hat guy, I did watch in shock as a flight attendant carried a very large item through airport security and onto the airplane. I must add that the flight attendant dragging the monstrous machine also wore a wet lopsided bee hive of a bun on the side of her head. I couldn’t decide which was more disturbing, the item being hauled through the airport or the hair.

Crazy is on the plane, each and every flight, but usually crazy is sitting in a seat and waiting for a drink – not working the other side of the cart. With me.

“Excuse me, ma’am” I said to the flight attendant with the screwy bun, channeling the TSA agent above. “Is that a vacuum cleaner attached to your bag?”

What other strange things have been found on planes?