Focus on travel guides

Focus on travel guides

Tag: government regulation

Senators Call Out Airlines for Flight Disruptions

The recent computer meltdowns at Southwest and Delta, two of the country’s most efficient and financially sound carriers, resulted in thousands of cancelled and delayed flights, disrupting the lives of hundreds of thousands of travelers. And they were just the latest incidents in what has come to seem like a systemic problem. Why? And what
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Those Samsung Smartphones, Still Smokin’

In a blow to smartphone giant Samsung, and a scare for a plane full of passengers, Southwest flight 994 last night was evacuated when a Galaxy Note 7 overheated and began smoking. According to USA Today’s report , the phone in question was a replacement for the owner’s original phone, which was among 1 million
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What Are Your Rights When You’re Involuntarily Bumped?

You get to the airport early, your luggage is checked, you have your boarding pass in hand—and you find out that your flight is overbooked. While airlines can usually find passengers willing to take a different flight in exchange for compensation, it’s the unfortunate truth that the act of involuntarily bumping passengers is pretty commonplace. Most
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Travelers to DOT: No Inflight Calls, Please!

To all appearances, the hot-button issue of inflight phone calls has been settled. If you’ve flown on a U.S. carrier lately, you’ve almost certainly heard no one yakking on a cellphone or other mobile device while airborne, and you might well assume that there’s an outright ban on inflight calling. Indeed, the Association of Flight
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United ‘Re-Accommodates’ a Passenger and the Internet Explodes

The media—social media, asocial media, major media, marginal media, all media—has been positively aflame for the past 24 hours with reporting and editorializing on United Airlines’ latest mishandling of a passenger confrontation. The facts of the case are not in dispute. United’s Sunday-night flight UA3411 between Chicago and Louisville was full—100 percent full—and all passengers
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Judge: Airline Price-Fixing Lawsuit Can Proceed

If you’re among the many air travelers who believe that the airlines have conspired to keep airfares high by restraining capacity growth, you’re about to have that suspicion reality-checked in a court of law. Late last week, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., overruled objections by the airlines and gave the go-ahead to a class-action
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Is Uber a Force for Good, or for Evil?

Computing the Social Value of Uber. (It’s High.) That’s the headline of a recent Bloomberg article that attempts to put Uber, both the company and the ride-share business model generally, into the perspective of overall economic gains or losses for society. Does Uber, in other words, have a positive or negative value to society? Based
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Alaska Air Is Latest to Cut Cuba Flights

The Trump administration’s newly imposed restrictions on travel to Cuba were expected to have a chilling effect on U.S. tourism to the island nation , but maybe not so quickly. The U.S. Department of the Treasury last week announced a handful of restrictions and sanctions that prohibit Cuba visits that were previously allowed under the
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These Potential FAA Changes Could Help (and Hurt) Travelers

The newest FAA reauthorization bills in the House and the Senate include several proposals that could improve air travel for consumers, as well as two terrible ideas and one that could be a blockbuster for travelers fed up with unreasonable airline fees. House and Senate Agreement Committees from both houses of Congress generally agree on
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Delta Bans Disruptive Trump Supporter for Life

While the Thanksgiving travel period was mostly uneventful, thankfully, at least one plane-full of holiday flyers got more than their fair share of inflight drama. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, aboard Delta flight 248 between Atlanta and Allentown, PA, a belligerent male passenger stood up in the aisle, arms raised in triumph, and harangued his
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