Tag: travel rants

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Trapped Onboard a Cruise Liner

Where: Italy
January 16, 2012 at 8:30 AM | by | Comments (0)

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:

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Virgin Atlantic Doesn't Always Bring the Sexy Back to Economy Class

September 7, 2011 at 11:26 AM | by | Comments (4)


Some things, sometimes, we take for granted when we travel longhaul. That we will over-indulge on sub-par food. That we will overimbibe so that we snore a little when we finally drop off. And that we will inevitably be sat next to an armrest grabber with an aversion to showers. But at least we will catch up on all the movies we meant to see over the past couple of months on our on-demand seatback TV.

So far, so predictable. Until we boarded our 10.5-hour flight from London-Gatwick to Las Vegas last week and realized that, yes, there were seatback TVs, but no, they were not on demand. There were 10 channels, with each one continually screening the same film on repeat. There were also about four music channels.

How very 1998! In this day and age, if you’re going to subject yourself to the indignities of patdowns, immigration lines and flatulent neighbors, the very least an airline can do is take your mind off it with your own TV set. But who was the culprit? Useless Continental? Snooty British Airways? Please-don’t-let-my-booking-be-with-them US Airways?

No, it was Virgin Atlantic.

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Dear US Banks: Travelers Need Chip-and-Pin Credit Cards Right Now. Stat. Pronto.

August 1, 2011 at 9:35 AM | by | Comments (0)

The USA is pretty tech-advanced, right? We've got Apple, Silicon Valley, domestic airlines with fleetwide WiFi; it all sounds like America has it great...until you get to Europe and try to pay for anything with a credit card. Rejected! Why? Because Europe has fancier cards embedded with a computer chip, connected to a pin, which then don't get swiped, but inserted into machines to pay for things. These cards—appropriately named "chip-and-pin"—are making things very difficult for US travelers.

While it's true that Europe suffers from more credit card fraud than the US, hence the extra security measures of the chip-and-pin, that doesn't mean that we should be left out of the fun and technology. Actually, we're left out of far more than that.

Paris' Velib bike rental kiosks famously don't accept any of the "old swipey" cards; they're chip-and-pin only. Corner stores have taped over the swipe portion of their card machines. We spent 15 minutes teaching a cash register girl at the Isle of Man airport what a swipey card was and how to properly charge us for our stupid postcards and pop. Then, just this past weekend, while attempting to buy a train ticket from Schiphol Airport to Amsterdam Centraal, we were alarmed to find that neither the machines nor the human-staffed ticket counters accepted swipey cards. Stuck without Euros, we considered bartering with travelers who did have chip-and-pin cards.

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'Tarmac Delay' Groups Push for Newer, More Expensive Airline Regulations

June 3, 2011 at 2:55 PM | by | Comments (0)

Tarmac delay laws have been a predictable disaster. As we explained at painful and indignant length in the leadup to the new rules, it makes no sense to incentivize airlines not to have public relations nightmares, since as companies trying to make money they already have that incentive.

Long tarmac delays happen because airplanes have to wait in line to take off, and if you return to the gate you lose your place in line and get stuck on the ground indefinitely. So pilots gamble on staying in line and riding out delays rather than returning to their gates. Creating rules that would bankrupt airlines for making those gambles—which is what tarmac delay fines do—would only lead to more cancellations and longer delays, we said.

So obvious were these scenarios that bureacrats could only defend the rules by promising airlines that regulators would "rarely impose the maximum penalties." Pause for a second and let that sink in. When pushed on how they were passing a bunch of really counterproductive new rules, bureaucrats resorted to telling airlines to have faith that the rules wouldn't get enforced. Since that's really stupid—airlines aren't going to rely on the good will of a person whose job it is to fine them—cancellations and longer delays immediately spiked. And now, because the groups who push regulations are apparently filled with shrill, insufferable busy bodies who have nothing better to do than ruin travel for the rest of us, it's happening all over again.

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Well, That Sucked: London 2012 Olympics Ticket Confirmations Went Out Today

May 27, 2011 at 2:05 PM | by | Comment (1)

Ticket reservation results for the London 2012 Olympics came out today and we're pissed. Check your inbox; if you completed your ticket requests before April 22, through the official US ticket distributor CoSport, then you should know by now whether or not you'll be hitting the velodrome, Wembley Stadium, the Aquatics Centre or all three (and more) 427 days from now.

How did you fare? Hopefully better than we did. Going through the approved channels and putting in our request of many different sports at many different ticket pricing levels, only one event was confirmed. And it's (of course) the one we were least excited about! Here's an important question: why was our request for 1 ticket to Canoe Slalom (at a venue outside London, even) denied? It was the most random event we requested and still...no dice.

If you're looking to snag some tickets still, the chances are slimmer than ever, but at least there is a chance. Unsold tickets hit the block on Friday, June 24th, although they are only open to those who attempted to get tickets through CoSport. Maybe we've got a second chance at canoe slalom after all.

Curious to see some stats? We've got 'em:

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The Most Annoying Seat Mate is the One with Many Little Annoyances

May 10, 2011 at 10:32 AM | by | Comments (2)

We spent all last night on a red-eye flight, and instead of sleeping, we strained our eyes to type and rant a bit about one persistent problem in travel: annoying seat mates. This is one personal experience.

It's really a pile of little annoyances in a seat mate that mounts to become a worst nightmare. Not someone who attempts to talk your ear off about their kids or even one who steals your seat and refuses to skooch. No, the people who annoy me, personally, the most are those commit a series of small crimes against airplane etiquette. And a few days ago, on a plane between Boston and Houston, I met my match.

I should have seen it coming, to tell you the truth. While boarding, the gate agents repeatedly made announcements calling for anyone who can, to please check their carry-ons. Looking down the line, you'd have thought this a flight for refugees. Oversized and numerous were the carry-ons and the death grips on them, just as well.

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Firsthand Body Scan: A Best-Case Scenario

April 15, 2011 at 11:58 AM | by | Comments (0)


Backscatter scanners at Pittsburgh Airport

The issue of whether or not to going along with full-body scanning at airport remains a hot one. Earlier this week, one of Jaunted's special operatives found himself facing a scanner at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Airport. He chose the pat-down and this is his story:

I made it to the shitty Terminal 2 [at CVG] with plenty of time before my flight. There was no line at security, but I did notice the TSA people were using the type of body scanner that looks like two monoliths on either side [ed. note: this is the Backscatter ray scanner]. It also seemed as if they had standard security open with the metal detector, but when i was about to put my belt and things down for their scan, a TSA lady was like "body scanner!" and i said, "I would like to opt out, please." And she said, "okay, hold on."

Even if I was in hurry, I still wasn't interested in getting drilled with not entirely tested radiation. So I waited there and after two minutes, they said that their only male groping artist was busy just then. Okay, so they didn't use those exact words to describe him, but he was busy—patting down an elderly man on a scooter.

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'Dismal Failure' as TSA Agents Let Guns Slip Through, Followed By No Real Consequences

February 23, 2011 at 2:31 PM | by | Comment (1)

An undercover TSA agent tested the new DFW full-body scanners by putting a pistol in her undergarments and repeatedly walking through security. She got through screening without a problem "every time she tried." TSA officials jumped into action by removing literally zero of the TSA screeners involved in the massive security breakdown. All of them are still working scanners today.

So someone leaked the story to the press. A journalist writing it up got Larry Wansley, former head of security at American Airlines, to go on the record describing the affair as "a dismal failure." That really forced TSA to go into action, and this time they put out a statement telling everybody to calm down because advanced imaging technology is "an effective tool to detect both metallic and nonmetallic items hidden on passengers." Good to know!

How many times are we going to play this game? The one where TSA sets itself up for failure, then fails, then insists that everything's going according to plan? Seriously.

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A Five-Step Guide on How Not to Take The Train in California

January 19, 2011 at 4:34 PM | by | Comment (1)


The view near Oceanside

Our semi-regular correspondent Julia Buckley, a Londoner who decamped to the US west coast, is learning some very valuable lessons about how we travel in America. Here, she shares her thoughts on a recent Amtrak trip through sunny CA.

Being from Europe where high speed trains are (thankfully) becoming the norm and you can hop in a carriage in one country and, two hours later, be in a different one without any airport nastiness, I'm a big fan of train travel. So when I had to make a one-way journey from LA to San Diego last month, training it down the Cali coastline seemed ideal. I’ve driven that route plenty of times and always been envious of the fact that the train tracks seemed to be bang on the beach. Plus, it’s easier to take photos while you’re lounging on the top deck of the train, rather than driving like a maniac down the 5. So I decided to lose my Amtrak virginity.

My one-way ticket cost $31 (including taxes)—much cheaper than flying. At 2hr50min, I decided it wouldn’t actually take much longer than flying, either, once you add in check in time, getting to the airport and so on. It seemed like a no-brainer. I was very excited. And then began the catalogue of mistakes.

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The Incandescent Incompetence of US Airways' Outsourced Baggage Recovery Call Center

January 14, 2011 at 6:08 PM | by | Comment (1)

Catch the first half of this lost luggage drama here!

To recap: Last Sunday, US Airways shuffled us through 16 hours, 4 flights, and 2 different airlines to get from LA to DC. The trip was a comedy of incompetence, capped off by the airline losing our holiday-gift-filled luggage. That was extra obnoxious insofar as we specifically asked for the simplest itinerary when we were getting rerouted up and down the East Coast, explicitly because we couldn't afford to lose that bag. But that's not what this post is about.

Instead this story is about how US Airways has seemingly gone out of its way to design the world's worst baggage recovery customer service system. Some of the post is necessarily speculative, since the airline's press office declined to respond to our questions about the location and scope of US Airways' baggage recovery call center. But given how we've personally spent over 100 hours on the phone now with these tools trying to recover our one lost bag, we're pretty confident we've got the basics down.

Here we go...

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Travel Rant: US Airways' Incandescent Incompetence with a Single Checked Luggage

January 12, 2011 at 3:31 PM | by | Comments (0)


Some old school US Airways planes

Who doesn't love a good travel rant? Well we're here to make you day with a sweet little rant from Jaunted writer Omri, who had the pleasure of checking a bag and having it lost in transit. It sucks, sure, but then it became a nightmare. Now let's get to the ranting...

Welcome to Part I of our two-part series on the borderline comedic but mindblowingly frustrating experience we're having with US Airways. Last Sunday they were supposed to get us from Washington DC to Los Angeles on a couple of morning flights, with everything being wrapped up by about 10am. Fast forward to 7:30pm Sunday night and we've gone through four flights at three airports on two airlines, all over 14 hours...and the airline lost our luggage. The emphasis is on lost because—had they merely delayed our luggage—we wouldn't need two different posts to peel back the many layers of airline incompetence on display.

But we do need two posts, because this has been such a learning experience and—if we here at Jaunted are about anything—we're all about learning. So today we'll go over what happened and the things we learned about the airports we "visited." And on Friday we'll dive into our in-depth investigation of their baggage recovery policy, complete with stonewalling by US Airway's press people. Preview: outsourcing baggage recovery services to India is fun for everyone, except anyone who loses baggage.

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What It's Like to Be Trapped Onboard a Crippled Cruise Ship: a Firsthand Account

November 10, 2010 at 3:04 PM | by | Comments (2)


Supplies being dropped to the Carnival Splendor

On Monday, the Carnival Splendor cruise ship suffered a small engine room fire, which caused the ship—while some 200 miles off the coast of San Diego—to loose power and call in tugs from the mainland. The ship is now operating on auxiliary power and its 3,299 passengers and 1,167 crew members have been subsisting on Pop Tarts, croissants, Spam and other relief groceries dropped to the ship by Navy helicopters.

With no phone signals, internet connection or even properly working toilets, the "conditions on board the ship are very challenging."

Although we can't hear the tales of misery from the Splendor guests quite yet, we do know someone who has experienced a similar situation. Kathy, who was kind enough to share her story with us, was stuck onboard a crippled cruise ship for three days as well, albeit a couple decades ago.

Kathy's three days of hell, at sea:

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