We often wonder if one week will ever pass in which there’s just not some totally obscure travel story. This week isn’t going to be it, as we’ve already found the winner for a huge "WTF."

A Houston woman was doing her best to navigate her rental car towards a hotel room for the night when she veered off the road and got the car stuck in a drainage pond in Idaho. However, instead of getting out of the car and making her way to safety, she just decided to hunker down and wait for help in the car. For like three days. We’re thinking she must have really liked her rental car, and maybe she scored some kind of sweet upgrade. ]]> kjb 2012-01-30T12:31:33-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2012/1/15/203340/942

Late Friday night, The Costa Cruises ship Costa Concordia sailed from the Italian port of Civitavecchia near Rome, beginning what would be a nice Mediterrnean cruise. Shortly thereafter, it went off course and struck a reef, eventually listing and coming to rest off the island of Giglio.

The weekend brought new stories, new shocks and new questions of what exactly happened that night, and how it could even happen. Even the death tool is fluctuating. So until some concrete facts emerge, we're returning to a story we know to be the firsthand account from a friend who survived a cruise ship accident (though it didn't end up sinking).

Kathy, who was kind enough to share her story with us, was stuck onboard a crippled cruise ship for three days, albeit a couple decades ago.

Here's her story:]]> JetSetCD 2012-01-16T08:30:01-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2012/1/2/84719/79654

When you’ve got loads of designer clothes that just need to get there on time, we’d probably recommend carrying on. Unfortunately for Rachel Zoe—famous for dressing celebs and her The Rachel Zoe Project show—checking things was apparently the only option, and now she’s missing all kinds of stuff.

The stylist to the starts was heading to Miami and then on to St. Barts to celebrate the holidays and took to the skies aboard American Airlines thinking that everything would go swell. She was wrong, and now like a week later all her stuff is missing somewhere in the maze of baggage carts, conveyor belts, and handlers in the American Airlines system. Her Gucci jackets and Missoni goods are nowhere to be found, and she’s taking to Twitter to complain about it. ]]> kjb 2012-01-02T10:14:34-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/11/18/144443/56

We’re sadly used to paying extra for our flights now – baggage, drinks, extra legroom seats, priority boarding… But one thing we never expected to have to shell out for is the actually taking off.

So it’s gobsmacking to hear of Comtel Air, an Austrian-based airline that, in October, launched a twice-weekly service from Birmingham (UK) to Amritsar (India). On Tuesday, a plane which should have taken off on Saturday, stopped in Vienna for a scheduled refueling; only, according to passengers, the pilot refused to take off until they clubbed together to pay £23,000 ($36,000) to get the plane in the air again.

For real.

After a six hour standoff (let’s not forget they were already three days late in their arrival), the passengers agreed to pay £130 each to get the ordeal over. If they didn’t have cash on them, they were escorted to ATMs in the airport before being let back onboard.]]> juliab 2011-11-18T16:05:01-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/11/13/214728/58

AirTran has a lot going on now with that Southwest thing and all, but it looks like they’re headed for a little bit of legal trouble. Lucky for them we think it’s slightly frivolous, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have to send out the legal team.

A couple from North Carolina just filed a lawsuit against the airline because they weren’t too happy about some of their fellow passengers—cockroaches. Apparently the little bugs made a surprise appearance on their flight to Houston, including the air vents. The passengers tried to voice their concerns to the flight attendants, but they claim that their pleas for help were ignored. ]]> kjb 2011-11-14T09:31:40-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/10/31/9197/8732

Happy Halloween!

This annual holiday is pretty much one of the most polarizing; you either love Halloween and get totally into it, or you don't care for it at all and end up cranky. Regardless, we can name one thing absolutely no one likes, and that's being stuck in travel hell. Some flyers experienced it this weekend during the various delays, cancellations and diversions, but sometimes nothing compares to retelling old spooky stories...

The Worst Moments of Travel Hell, 2011:]]> JetSetCD 2011-10-31T10:01:08-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2011/10/17/7836/6261

Air India can't seem to do anything right. The company tried for years to join Star Alliance—we covered some of their bumbling efforts last May—only to recently give up and suspend integration efforts. Star Alliance's minimum membership requirements, which other airlines seem to be able to meet just fine, turned out to be just too difficult for the Air India people to figure out. On its face, that's not a particularly encouraging signal of competence.

Now comes news out of London that the airline was responsible for a truly epic nine hour tarmac delay, which came at the end—not at the beginning, but at the end—of a long-haul flight from Mumbai.

200 passengers plus one Boeing 777 minus any food unsurprisingly equaled grumpiness. If you're saying to yourself, "I can't believe cops weren't called to put down a riot," you'll be interested to know that cops were indeed called to put down what almost became a riot. ]]> Omri 2011-10-17T09:03:29-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/