Jaunted

Travel Politics / Politics Travel / Congress / Airport Security / Airline Security / → All Tags

Amended Congress Immigration Bill Will Annoy the Heck Out of Out-Bound Tourists

Washington, D.C. is rife with scandals over how various branches of the government have been violating people's privacy and security. Whether it's the IRS targeting conservative groups or the Department of Justice monitoring journalists, it appears that federal agencies have been given vast powers to collect information and they're not very good at holding on to that information.

So naturally, Congress has chosen this week to add a provision to the new immigration bill that requires all non-U.S. citizens to be fingerprinted when flying out of the U.S.'s 30 busiest airports.

Because if there's anything that American politicians are good at generating, it's irony.

more ›

Travel Politics / Politics Travel / Congress / Travel Fees / Ticket Fees / Travel News / → All Tags

Hey, Who's Up For a Huge New Tax on Airline Tickets?

You kids might not remember this, but a few years ago Congress wanted to tax foreign tourists in order to increase foreign tourism. The deeply moronic public theory was to take money from tourists, then use that money to promote tourism, then wait around for all the tourists to start flooding in. In actuality it was a way to drive travelers to Las Vegas restaurants and hotels and away from other parts of the country, all done at the expense of tourists who just wanted to come to the United States. Congress ended up passing that legislation and the President ended up signing it, by the way.

Fast forward to the 2014 budget submitted by President Obama to Congress. It looks to make air travel better by taxing air travel more. The giggle-worthy logic begins with the idea that getting through an airport takes a really long time right now because there aren't enough workers and infrastructure, and that's depressing travel. But if you tax travelers, the reasoning goes, you'll be able to put that money into airports. Airports will become better, more people will want to use them, and magic happens.

more ›

Travel Tips / Politics / Congress / Political Travel / Presidential Travel / → All Tags

Traveling on Election Day? Register Now So You Can Still Vote

If you're a US citizen and you'll be traveling overseas during the US 2012 election, have you yet registered to vote by absentee ballot?

The big election date is Tuesday, November 6th, and you'd better get cracking if you don't want to lose the chance to tick the box you like best.

Even if your home isn't in a battleground state, House and Senate seats are up for grabs, so every vote counts. Fortunately, it only takes five minutes to fill out the forms online and mail them off!

more ›

Politics Travel / Travel Politics / Congress / Las Vegas Travel / Harry Reid / Hotels / → All Tags

Congress Pretty Psyched to Give More of Your Money to Hotels

Almost as long as there's been a Jaunted, Nevada Senator and current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been pissing off Jaunted bloggers. In 2008 we took sardonic note of his idiotic statement blaming tourists for the annual DC summer stench. In 2009 we called him a "travel busybody" for killing a bill that would have limited how much Vegas hotels could benefit from stimulus funding. Later that year we rolled our eyes at his push to fine foreign tourists and use that money to promote "Vegas-style tourism." In 2010 we predicted that he'd keep doing that nonsense for a while.

By this summer we had just gone ahead and dumped him into our bad ideas category. Of the politicians involved in travel politics, he is not the most subtle.

more ›

TSA / Politics Travel / Travel Politics / Congress / Airport Security / Airline Security / BOS / Travel News / → All Tags

TSA Behavior Profiling Triggers Massive Racial Profiling Scandal

Yeah listen. We're running out of new ways to explain how in practice there's no such thing as truly "random" screening, the kind that avoids any kind of profiling. Either you get top-down profiling, where some official creates a profile and tells agents to look for it, or you get bottom-up profiling, where you devolve authority to agents on the ground and they use their own judgment.

Top-down profiling is problematic because we live in a decent society and we don't want government officials telling airport security agents to search for travelers who fit a look. But the bottom-up approach is problematic because it lets sexist and racist douchebags harass women and African-Americans with impunity, because they say the travelers were acting weird.

We hit this theme pretty hard last year, writing again and again that giving more responsibility to agents on the ground risks rampant sexual harassment and racial harassment. Then TSA launched their behavior-based system, which gave agents on the ground more responsibility.

How do you think that went?

more ›

Airline Industry / Politics Travel / Travel Politics / Congress / Europe Travel / Green Travel / → All Tags

Congress Bans US Airlines from EU Global Warming Program

It's always heartwarming when American politicians, Republicans and Democrats, Members of Congress and the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, unite around an issue. It doesn't happen often, and almost never during an election year, but when it does it becomes almost a testament to the spirit of American democracy.

Like this week, when, with the support of the White House and the US Transportation Secretary, the Senate followed the House in passing legislation that outlaws American companies from obeying the European Union's new environmental regulations on airlines, thereby blocking efforts to halt global warming and risking a trade war.

Wait, what?

more ›

Bad Ideas / TSA / Politics Travel / Airport Security / Airline Security / Congress / Airline Industry / Airports / → All Tags

TSA Getting Yelled At By Just About Everyone Now

We're almost beginning to feel sorry for the TSA officials. They spend much of their time dealing with what appear to be the world's dumbest passengers, and then at the end of it all they get yelled at by angry politicians. This week is proving to be particularly bad.

Top agency officials spent most of today facing withering criticism from Senators, up to and including the accusation that they show "arrogant disregard for real Americans who have to put up with this baloney." We're not really sure what that means, and we tend to cringe when politicians start posturing on behalf of "real Americans," but certainly TSA workers have been a little grabby lately with diabetics' insulin and cancer survivors' body parts and other people's stuff in general.

These Senate hearings are almost kind of Congress's way of piling on, given that House members were outright calling for investigations of TSA over the summer.

more ›

TSA / Politics Travel / Airport Security / Airline Security / Full-Body Scanners / Congress / Airline Industry / Airports / Airline Fees / → All Tags

Hey, Who's Up for a New TSA Security Fee So We Can Pay Down the National Debt?

You might remember last spring, when we threw something very close to a temper tantrum over TSA's request to increase the security fees that passengers pay with every ticket. We suggested that maybe the agency should stop wasting the money they already had—the hike was floated right after TSA started rolling out gingerbread man scanners as replacements for their predictably rejected billion-dollar full-body scanners—before they started coming after more of our money.

The idea that TSA is hopelessly wasteful was echoed this morning in a POLITICO story about the agency's budget, which included bits like "tendency to grab on to a new system before it's really validated" (no kidding) and "cycle of faulty equipment and failed programs" (everybody remember puffer machines?)

And yet that's not the most infuriating part of the story. It turns out that not only is an eventual $15 security fee increase back on the table, but—weirdly, unbelievably—it's not even all going to be spent on airport security. Which is kind of weird, because with "security" right there in the name, you'd kind of think that's what it would be for.

more ›

Airline Industry / Airlines / In-Flight Comfort / Congress / Political Travel / Airline News / Travel Hell / Delays / → All Tags

Oh, Goody: Tarmac Delay Laws Expand to Include International Flights

We've explained at length—see here and here, and probably here, and definitely this one—how the Department of Transportation's tarmac regulations are a recipe for travel hell. The assumption behind imposing huge fines for delays is that the airline industry simply wasn't trying hard enough to get its planes off the ground, and that market-based incentives like money and public relations disasters weren't enough to make them want to fly people around.

Put that way—and at the risk of belaboring the obvious—that's a pretty stupid assumption.

But regulations were imposed anyway and, as was easily and explicitly predictable, we ended up with more delays and more flight cancellations. So naturally the government has now expanded tarmac delay laws to include international airlines.

more ›

Politics Travel / Travel Politics / Spirit Airlines / Airline News / Airline Industry / Political Travel / Congress / FAA / Airfare Sales / LCCs / → All Tags

Spirit Airlines Celebrates FAA Shutdown, Wants Congress to Eliminate Taxes or Something

On Monday we flagged for you the unofficial airfare tax holiday that the United States is currently "enjoying," courtesy of Washington DC being the most insanely dysfunctional place on the planet.

Without getting into too many details: House Republicans told Senate Democrats that they would only fund the FAA if three powerful Senate Democrats gave up on something called the Essential Air Service, which is a program that sends a bunch of money to (ironically) totally inessential rural airports in those Senators' states. Everyone from liberal journalists to travel bloggers agree that the subsidies are totally unjustifiable, so this was partly an attempt to embarrass the Democrats. The Republicans basically said "there's no way you guys are shameless enough to hold up FAA funding just to keep sending obviously wasteful pork to tiny airports in your states," to which the Democrats responded "actually, we're exactly that shameless." And that's why there are no airfare taxes right now, because FAA doesn't have enough money to collect money.

The sad thing is that we don't have the space to dwell on that insanity, because of course Spirit Airlines looked at both sides of the political aisle and said "you want to see shameless... we'll show you shameless."

more ›

Airline News / Airlines / FAA / Airfare Sales / Political Travel / Congress / → All Tags

Save Some Money on Airfares Since Congress Can't Get Its Act Together

The government’s general ineptitude might just be your ticket to cheaper airfare, but you’ve got to act quickly. Due to the budget battle over the FAA in Washington, DC it seems that certain airfare and travel taxes are now optional—and that means that you might be able to save a few bucks on your next airfare purchase.

The unofficial “sale” started over the weekend, but it seems a few airlines still might be passing along the savings. Initially there were several airlines where you could save a few bucks—including United and Delta—but at this point it looks like Alaska Airlines, Virgin America, and Frontier might be the only ones left. Other carriers—we’re looking at you American and US Airways—bumped their fares to make up the difference right from the beginning, so in reality they’re just charging for the tax as part of their fare and pocketing it.

more ›

Airline Security / Political Travel / Congress / TSA / Airport Security / Texas Travel / Full-Body Scanning / Texas / → All Tags

Showdown Today on Texas Law to Throw TSA Employees in Jail

Today is the last day of the Texas House's special session, which means it's the last chance for Texas lawmakers to pass their TSA anti-groping bill. The bill, which would make conducting enhanced pat-downs a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $4,000 fine, was first passed by the House, then modified and passed by the Senate, and is now back in the House for a final vote. As of publication time there's still no news on whether the vote is yay, nay, or nothing.

Will Texas lawmakers hold a vote in time? Which version of the bill will pass? What will the Texas public think? Who cares. This law is moronic. It won't pass in any recognizable form. If it passes in any form at all it will be struck down by the courts. If it isn't struck down by the courts TSA will pressure Texas until the law is repealed. This is our third post on the topic, and frankly we're starting to resent Texas just a little bit for continuing with this charade.

more ›