Author: mark
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Podcast #98 — Stolen Luggage & Passports; Restaurants Want Your Smartphone
A backpack stolen from the train to the airport — or more specifically, passports inside the stolen backpack — unexpectedly extends a beer-tasting weekend in Brussels. During my recent international trips, I find that Apple’s FaceTime and iMessage aren’t working reliably — could be because of hotel WiFi bandwidth constraints. TSA’s PreCheck expedited security screening feels like you’ve passed through… Continue Reading →
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American Airlines Reaches Out to Apologize… Again and Again
American Airlines has been a bit more forward over the past month in letting me know they care about me. A phone conversation, replies to my Tweets – I haven’t had this level of attention from AA in the prior 27 years and 2.4 million miles that I’ve flown them. However, I’m not sure this new effort is having its… Continue Reading →
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Best Hotel Amenity? Free Breakfast
Recent surveys by TripAdvisor and Hotels.com report that the most popular hotel amenity is free WiFi. If they both didn’t misplace a decimal point, then they surveyed the wrong travelers. Experienced travelers know that the most important amenity is the free hotel breakfast. Now I’m not denying that the growth of mobile devices — smartphones, tablets, laptops — has made… Continue Reading →
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Podcast #97 — 1st Trip to Beijing; Most Important Hotel Technology
Lots of travel has kept me away from the mic — Beijing, London, Vienna, Phoenix, New York, and New Orleans. Big difference in airline load factor between international and domestic flights. The international flights were at 30-50% capacity while the domestic flights were booked solid. These trips allowed me to compare the different treatment US airlines get in international airports.… Continue Reading →
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Podcast #96 — Eating and Drinking with Social Media; Frequent Flier Alliances
Finishing up my annual 2-week travel sabbatical in an unseasonably warm Chicago. In this episode, a listener asks about if and when to use travel compression socks, we discern the popularity of in-flight Wi-Fi service from Gogo’s IPO filing, and dissect a recent article on the best airports for tech users. We look at the new wave of social media… Continue Reading →
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Podcast #95 — Holiday Travel Tips; Bad Spirit In The Air
Once again skipping the mayhem of the busiest travel week of the year, though it’s getting more difficult as the Thanksgiving travel crush seems to start earlier each year. Good listener comments about last episode’s story of a rare prop plane flight sitting next to a “passenger of size”; then my own thoughts on USAir‘s completely inadequate response to the… Continue Reading →
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Podcast #94 — Plane Conversation Etiquette; Decline of Hot Flight Attendants
It’s been a while since the last podcast. Contrary to what you might have thought, I haven’t podfaded — at least, not quite yet. A flight out of Grand Junction, CO gave me a throw-back moment — a flight in a prop plane. Sitting next to a huge guy on a very small plane got me thinking about how to… Continue Reading →
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Podcast #93 — Travel Stories from September 11th; Traveling with a Google Chromebook
Coming up to the 10th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, I repeat a segment from the September 2005 episode that tells the stories of travelers trying to get back home when all planes were grounded and all US borders were closed after the attacks. Also, we finish up the two-part review of new Google technology with observations after… Continue Reading →