Travel tips from Newsweek

As a traveling "newbie" (my first trip is coming up, though), I don't have any personal experiences to share. But The July 30 Newsweek had a few tips for air travel. I'm sure all your experienced folks already know all this.

Title of the article: Happy Tarmac Sitting!

Most-delayed big-city airports that get fewer than 70 percent of flights off on time:
* Chicago O'Hare
* Portland, Maine
* NY Kennedy
* Newark (NJ) Liberty
* Charlotte-Douglas (NC)
* Philadelphia

I'm guessing no one is surprised by those.

To see 10 hours in airplane hell, there's a YouTube video (Delta Flight 6499) that some guy posted about his 10 hours spent on a plane on the tarmac with no food and plenty of crying babies due to unspecified mechanical problems and weather. Haven't watched it (am scared to), but I'm sure it's a dozy.

Newsweek offered these travel tips:

* Research before you buy your ticket
- Avoid busiest airports and busiest times (duh!)
- National Air Traffic Controllers Association (www.natca.org) offers airport-specific reports on how to avoid delays, like "fly mornings at JFK, weekends at Logan"
- At flightstats.com, you can check specific flights and see records of on-time departures and cancellations.
- Check avoiddelays.com, which publishes rankings of the "worst offenders": airlines, flights and airports that had most and longest delays last summer.
- Fly as early in the morning as you can to get in/out before troubles start.

* Book a good ticket
- Passengers who use online travel agents and consolidators to get low prices may be the first people bumped.
- Airlines may work harder to find new flights for their own frequent fliers and those who bought tickets directly from the airline.
- Paper ticket helps you jump to a different carrier more quickly.
- Nonstop flights may be worth the extra money.
- Allow two hours between connecting flights.
- Give yourself a buffer day.

* Use your airport time
- Check in at curbside. (Did I hear AA is charging for this now?)
- Make sure cosmetics and liquids confirm to TSA rules.
- Some airlines take cell phone numbers so they can text message passengers information about changes.

* Bring a sandwich, extension cord (ie, you can't avoid delays)
- Make sure phone is charged.
- Bring phone numbers of all major airlines.
- Bring a good snack with you on the plane. If the flight doesn't have a meal, then you won't get food while stuck on the runway.
- Carry an extension cord so if you're stuck for several hours at the airport, you won't have to crowd around the one outlet by the gate to charge your phone or power up your laptop.

* Be nice, but be tough
- Don't take out your frustrations on a hapless airline employee
- If don't get satisfaction after delay or cancellation, follow up later with a written complaint to the airline. They don't always give the best consolation prizes on the spot, but confronted with your disgruntlement a week or two later, you might get a travel voucher.

Ice is amazing

Just an FYI, really...

I was in Eugene, OR last week. There's a great restaurant you should visit for lunch (Cafe Yumm!). They make the most delicious rice bowls. Anyway, they have this sauce called Yumm! sauce, that I wanted to buy and bring home. Thanks to the darn terrorists, I can't carry it on, so I had to pack it. Anyway, the sauce must remain refrigerated, so the wife of a guy on-site gave me some Ziploc bags to store ice. I packed the Ziplocs with ice, stuck them with the sauce in the big plastic laundry sack from the hotel, thinking, heck, it will only be 3-ish hours for me to get to the airport, fly to SLC and drive home, so it should be OK.
However, as it so happens to the best laid plans, my 6 a.m. flight was canceled, and I had to wait for the 10:00 flight (of course, this happened after I checked in at the airport). THEN, when we landed in SLC, my luggage wasn't on the plane. So, I had resigned myself to the inevitability of throwing away my Yumm! Sauce. My luggage arrived at my place at 10:00 pm Saturday night. I was coming down with a cold, and I was busy reading Harry Potter, so I decided that the sauce was ruined and it could wait to be unpacked and thrown away Sunday morning. So, Sunday morning, I opened my suitcase only to find that there was still ice in the Ziploc bags!! Of course, some of it had melted and leaked onto my clothes, but my Yumm! sauce was saved. I couldn't believe it. Next time, instead of ice, I might just buy frozen peas and try those instead. So, three cheers for insulation!! Just in case any of you want to transport anything chilled from location to locations...

Atlanta car rental...

This is more of a funny (kind of) story than a travel tip...

I recently rented a car from Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Atlanta (not at the airport) while my car was being worked on for a few days. It was a Suzuki Reno. I couldn't figure out how to put it in park the first day I had it. (tip: push down on the gear shift to get it to move to reverse or park.) When I went to return it I stopped to fill it with gas. I couldn't figure out where the button was to release the cover thingy to the gas tank. I looked everywhere, but decided to just get the manual out to look it up rather than waste anymore time looking like a complete idiot at the gas station. I opened the packet the manual was in while I was pulling it out a bag of CRACK fell out too!!! I was pleased to know I had been driving around with crack in the glove compartment for four days. I don't think I'll ever be able to rent a car now without checking the glove compartment. lol.

FYI: The gas cover release button is down on the floor by the door on the driver's side.

Dallas/Fort Worth, TX

If you enter the airport from the north side, use the credit card you used to rent your car, and you won't have to pay the toll.

Leaving the DFW airport to take the 635 loop north/eastbound, I found this route the easiest:

From rental car area, take your first right (out of car lot), first left, first right (at light), then left at light (at this light, there is a sign pointing you to turn right to pick up the 635. Do not turn right. Turn left instead. You will start to see signs for 635).

If you like Panera Bread (like I do!), there is one just west of highway 80 on a right-side exit while you are on the 635.

If you like ice coffee, the bartender at the Olive Garden on Greenville Ave (just off 635 loop eastbound from DFW) pours a mean one.

The Hampton Inn near the south entrance to DFW is nice and clean and easy accesible to the airport. The Fairfield Inn at the north side of DFW is skanky with limited parking.

Welcome, Travelers

I reminisced recently with fellow trainer Lisa about the scrumptious blackberry cobbler served at the Country Tavern in Kilgore, TX. As our conversation progressed, I wished aloud there was a Web site that posted trainer-tried-and-true information on restaurants, hotels, airport ins & outs, driving routes, and other tips on making our traveling lives easier.

I now propose this one: Trainers' Traveling Tips. It has no official affiliation to DTI. It's just something I'd like us, as a community of travelers, to be able to use to gather and give information to help each other out. If you know a shortcut from DFW to Longview, let us know. If you know a great server at a local restaurant, give us her name. If the traffic in Houston is bad between 8 a.m. and noon, give us the 4-1-1.

I think it would work nicely this way (if you have a better idea, try it and see how it plays out): Simply create a post for the city and state you want to tell us about, and write about it. If the city you want to write about already has a post, add a comment to that post. That way, we can keep the site organized by city.

If you want to post to the blog, you must have a blogger account; you can create one at blogspot.com. If you prefer not to create a blog account, please email me your information, and I will post it for you.

Thanks,

Danielle P