Our network of travel options has become one of the world’s great wonders. You can get from anywhere to anywhere else, with a speed, price, and reliability that would have amazed our ancestors.
But our network of travel options has also become complex. Security, rules and regulations, and added charges can make huge dents in your comfort and mood.
Unless, of course, you know the rules of the road—and the sky.
Meet arriving passengers at Departures
If your job is to pick up some arriving passengers at the airport, your first instinct is probably to greet them on the airport’s Arrivals level (or area). It would be backward to meet them at Departures, right?
Yes. But the problem with arrivals is that everyone else is waiting to pick up passengers there, too. The Arrivals curb is usually a giant traffic jam, filled with idling cars. Most airports employ security guards to chase you away, forcing you to circle the airport again and again until your passengers finally emerge from the terminal.
But on the Departures level of the airport, there’s no traffic jam. Cars pull up, discharge passengers, and drive away. There’s plenty of space for you to pull up and wait—and in most cases, there are no guards yelling at you to circle the airport. Usually, you can wait comfortably at the curb until your loved ones arrive.
Three Web sites for less agonizing air travel
These three Web sites give you juicy insight that will make you a lot more comfortable in flight. Bookmark ’em. Use ’em.
• FlightAware.com. Type in a flight number, and see where that flight is in the sky at that second, as well as its projected landing time. It’s fantastic if you’re supposed to pick someone up at the airport. You also get to see maps of its altitude and speed, the highest and lowest prices paid for tickets on that flight, and most useful of all: the flight number’s record for being early or late.
• SeatGuru.com. Don’t choose a seat online until you’ve looked it up on this site! You’ll find out if your seat doesn’t recline, doesn’t have a window, has a broken TV, and so on. No ugly surprises.
• SeatAlert.com. When you book your flight and find out that only middle seats are available, what should you do? Panic? No—go to this Web site and ask to be notified if an aisle or window opens up. They often do, so you can swoop in and snag them.
(Each of these sites also has a phone app that performs the same stunts. Ready, set, download!)
What the three-letter airport codes mean
Every airport on earth has a three-letter code. It’s a great time-saving shorthand for pilots, baggage handlers, travel agents, and so on.
It’s easy to understand why MIA means the Miami airport, BOS means Boston, and SLC is Salt Lake City. But it’s not as easy to understand why Vancouver is YVR, Baltimore is BWI, and Chicago is ORD.
In the beginning, airports inherited the existing two-letter codes that the National Weather Service had been using for cities, such as LA for Los Angeles, PH for Phoenix, PD for Portland, Oregon. When the airport codes expanded to three letters, many just tacked on an X to fill out the abbreviation: LAX, PHX, PDX, and so on.
Sometimes, a city’s former name solves the mystery. The airport in Beijing (formerly Peking) is known as PEK; St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) is LEN; Mumbai (formerly Bombay) is BOM.
Then there are airports named after an important local historical figure. Nashville’s has BNA (for Col. Harry S. Berry); Knoxville’s is TYS (after Navy pilot Charles McGhee Tyson); and Spokane’s is GEG (for Maj. Harold Geiger).
Or historical airfields. Orlando’s airport (MCO) was once McCoy Air Force Base; Chicago’s (ORD) is on the former Orchard Place; and New Orleans’s airport (MSY) used to be the Moisant Stock Yards.
Complicating matters: Commercial airport codes can’t begin with an N, since that letter belongs to Navy airports. Nor can they start with a W or a K, which are reserved for radio stations. Canada, meanwhile, has grabbed Y to designate its airports, such as YVR for Vancouver, YYC for Calgary, and YUL for Montreal.
OK, so you’re not allowed to start your airport code with an N, a W, or a K. So what are you supposed to do if your city’s name is Newark, Wilmington, or Key West?
You skip the first letter altogether. That’s why Newark is EWR, Wilmington is ILM, and Key West is EWY.
Or you get creative. Washington National Airport can’t use W or N, so it’s DCA (District of Columbia Airport).
You’d think Dulles International Airport would be DIA, but when handwritten, it looks too much like the other Washington airport, DCA. So they spell it backward: IAD.
Once a code becomes known to the airplane industry, it’s awfully hard to change. Just ask Sioux City, Iowa, whose airport abbreviation is, to this day, SUX.
Cheap airfare: The Basics
The prices of airline tickets, as you may be aware, vary to an almost nonsensical degree.
Here’s an example from FlightAware.com. A passenger who paid $54 for a coach ticket on this flight could be sitting right next to someone who was charged a princely $2,135:
Why the variation? The airlines have developed complicated software that offers different prices to different potential passengers at different times. Their interest is in computing the highest price you’re likely to pay. They take into account the route, the time of day/week/year, your past spending on plane travel, the competition, and psychology.
If you do a Web search for “when to buy plane tickets,” you’ll be treated to a huge list of old wives’ tales. One might tell you that tickets are lowest when you buy on Tuesdays, or lowest when you fly midweek, or lowest 52 days before the flight.
Are you sitting down? None of that is true.
Even the old Saturday Night Rule is rarely true anymore—the one that says if you can stay over on a Saturday night in your destination city, your round-trip fare will be lower.
These factors, however, are true:
• When to buy. Prices tend to go up in the month before the flight, peaking immediately before the flight. That’s because business travelers are the ones most likely to book flights at the last minute—and they’re the ones who can afford steep prices.
You generally won’t save money by buying a ticket more than a month out, however. In fact, booking six months or a year in advance may cost you dearly, because in that time, your plans are likely to change.
• Flexibility = money. On flight-search Web sites such as Hipmunk.com, Travelocity.com, and Kayak.com, you can indicate that your travel dates are flexible. If you are, indeed, willing to shift your departure or return by a day or so, you can save big bucks, precisely because you’re doubling or tripling your odds of finding a sweet spot in the airlines’ complicated pricing structure.
Those sites also let you specify flexibility in airports. Lots of cities are served by multiple airports: New York has JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, and even Islip (Long Island) and White Plains. Tell Hipmunk, Travelocity, or Kayak that you’re willing to consider other airports—and here again, you multiply your odds of finding lower fares.
• Don’t forget Southwest. Southwest Airlines is unique for a few reasons. First, it flies a lot of routes (in the Southwest, of course) that nobody else does. Second, it doesn’t assign seats; it’s first come, first served.
Finally, Southwest doesn’t share its flight-schedule data with the flight-search Web sites, such as Hipmunk and Kayak! Those sites never show you Southwest options; to see them, you have to go to Southwest’s own Web site. Annoying, but true.
• Consider “throwaway ticketing.” It may defy the laws of common sense—but it’s often less expensive to buy a round-trip ticket than a one-way ticket! So if you need a one-way flight from, say, New York to Chicago, look up the round-trip price; it may be lower.
If you buy such a ticket, go ahead and fly to Chicago. Just don’t use the return ticket.
However, you should call the airline a couple of hours before the flight to let them know you won’t be aboard. For two reasons: First, you may get a refund (if it was a refundable ticket) or a credit for a future flight (if it was a non-refundable ticket). Second, it’s good karma to let the airline give your seat to some poor soul who really needs it.
Get your next driver’s license verified—or you won’t fly
In the United States, a driver’s license is fairly easy to forge; just ask any 16-year-old in a bar. And yet that license is considered good enough ID to let you onto plane flights! It’s not, ahem, much of a barrier to terrorists.
Furthermore, every state issues its own kind of driver’s license, which has its own requirements and design. It’s not really a national ID card.
That’s why, in 2005, Congress passed the Real ID act—and the verified driver’s license was born. You can’t get this kind of license without showing two other forms of government ID, such as a Social Security card and a birth certificate.
When your current license expires and it’s time to renew, you’d be wise to get the verified type as its replacement. You have to do this in person, either at your state’s Department of Motor Vehicles or a local AAA office. (The AAA will do the job for you even if you’re not an AAA member.)
Why? According to the current timeline (which may change), starting in 2017, the old type of driver’s license will no longer be accepted as ID at airports. If you want to get onto a plane, you’ll have to show either a verified driver’s license or a passport.
Striking back against the toothpaste-industrial complex
As you probably know, the TSA doesn’t let you travel with liquids or gels in containers that hold more than 3.4 ounces.
That’s a goofy rule for a hundred reasons. For example, you’re perfectly welcome to bring three 3.4-ounce containers of the same liquid. And they care only about what the container could hold, not how much it does hold. If you have a 4-ounce bottle that’s half full, they’ll still confiscate it. And why 3.4 ounces? Is there a difference between the explosions produced by a 3.4- and 3.5-ounce bottle of chemicals?
Well, anyway.
If you’re a frequent traveler, you’ll discover something peculiar about toothpaste. You might think that the best-selling tube size would be 3.1 ounces—logical enough, right?
But in fact, if you spend way too much time in the oral hygiene aisle of your drugstore, you’ll find toothpaste packaged in these sizes: 0.8 ounces, 3.6 ounces, 4.0 ounces, 4.1 ounces, 4.2 ounces, 6.0 ounces, 6.2 ounces, 6.4 ounces, and 6.5 ounces. See anything missing in that list? Anyone? Anyone?
That’s right: You can’t buy a 3.4-ounce toothpaste!
The toothpaste-industrial complex would much rather make you buy lots of small tubes, at a much higher price per ounce—or a big tube, which the TSA will throw away so that you have to buy a replacement when you land.
You can save yourself a lot of money, time, and waste, though, if you buy your toothpaste online. On Amazon.com, for example, you’ll find toothpaste available in non-drugstore sizes like 2.8 ounces. That’s still not ideal—3.4 ounces would be ideal!—but it’s much closer.
PreCheck: Getting through security the 2001 way
There are so many reasons to be frustrated by the TSA (the Transportation Security Administration) and the bureaucracy created after 9/11 to make air travel safer. But there’s one thing the TSA is doing right, and that’s TSA PreCheck.
These are special lanes at airport security reserved for people the TSA has checked out in advance and found not to be security risks. In these lanes, you don’t have to take off your shoes, belt, or jacket. You don’t have to pull out your laptop and toiletries bag. You don’t have to put your arms up inside some whole-body scanner as if you’re getting mugged. Instead, it’s like traveling before 9/11 ever happened.
A couple of years ago, PreCheck was just a pilot program. You were selected to participate at random, and you didn’t get to use the PreCheck lane every time.
But these days, you can also apply to be in PreCheck by visiting one of the offices at 300 airports around the country. You get fingerprinted and pay $85; if you’re a US citizen and not a criminal, you’ll get your Known Traveler Number in a couple of weeks. In general, if you enter this number when you’re booking a flight, you’ll get to use the PreCheck lanes at any of 120 US airports.
The takeaway here: First, check your boarding pass for the word PreCheck every time you fly, to see if you’ve won the TSA lottery. Second, know what that means: You can use the speed lane, you don’t have to take off your shoes, belt, or coat, and you can leave your laptop in your bag.
How to find room for your carry-on
As you know if you’ve flown recently, there’s rarely enough room in the overhead bins for everybody’s luggage. Very often, you discover that all the bins are full, and you’re told you’ll have to check your carry-on bag.
But here’s a little secret that flight attendants know: There is always room for one more bag.
Think about it: The passengers who board first find empty bins. They have no incentive to place their stuff up there efficiently. It doesn’t occur to them that space may eventually become tight. And once it does, most people have a “that’s not my problem” attitude.
That’s why, by the time you come along, you may discover that somebody has taken up two or three feet of bin space with something flat: a coat, a shopping bag, or a garment bag. Or someone might have laid a backpack or briefcase horizontally instead of sitting it upright. People often put their rolling luggage up there the long, wide way, even if the bin is deep enough to accommodate it wheels first.
With a small amount of rearranging, you can fit your bag, too. You’ve probably never made the attempt, though, because it involves touching other people’s stuff. And that, of course, involves a social awkwardness that you may not want to confront.
But it’s worth the effort. The moment of interaction will be over in 15 seconds—and because you didn’t have to check your bag, you’ll be on your way 20 minutes sooner when you land.
The trick is to put your bag under the coat, shopping bag, or garment bag. Or turn that backpack upright to make room. Or turn the other guy’s rolling bag 90 degrees, wheels in. With only a few seconds of study, you can always find a little more space.
If you have to move someone’s clothing or shopping bag, consider announcing your intention first. Ask the passengers in that row: “Do you guys mind if I put my bag under this jacket up here?” Nobody ever minds. In fact, they’ll wish they were as assertive and clever as you are.
The noise-canceling earbuds that cost 28 cents
Hours of exposure to very loud engines—even inside the plane—is bad for your hearing and bad for your brain. It’s fatiguing. If you can block out that noise, you land more refreshed.
For this reason, companies such as Bose have made a fortune selling noise-canceling headphones, at $300 a pair, to well-heeled frequent flyers. But you can achieve exactly the same effect for 28 cents—with foam earplugs from the drugstore.
If you haven’t tried them in years, you’ll be impressed at how far earplugs have come in comfort and noise-blocking ability. You squish them, slip them into your ears, and hold them in place for about 15 seconds. They slowly expand until they perfectly and comfortably block your ear canal, along with most of the decibels that are trying to get in. If your goal is noise cancellation, they are every bit as effective as headphones—but they don’t need batteries, they take up no space at all in your carry-on, and, of course, they cost $299.72 less.
The sole disadvantage: You can’t also listen to music or movies, as you can with noise-canceling headphones. But if your activities on the plane are sleeping or reading instead, these colorful little bits of foam might be the best in-flight upgrade you’ve ever received.
The airplane pillow nobody knows
Some people can sleep on planes; some can’t. Some people bring inflatable squishy neck rings to hold their heads up while they doze; some don’t.
And some realize that an airplane’s headrest has secret pillow flaps, and others don’t.
On most modern airplanes, the headrest has flaps on either side of your head that you can grab with your hand and tug into position—as a support for both sides of your head.
There’s a strong hinge inside, so each flap stays at the angle you choose. It’s strong enough to stop your head from flopping onto your shoulder when you fall asleep. It’s not exactly like a pillow, but it may add just enough support to help you drift off in flight.
The armrest: One tip and one law
You do know that the armrest is hinged on most planes, right? It swings up and out of the way. That’s exceptionally useful when there’s an empty seat next to you and you want to stretch out, or when you have a sleeping child, or when you want to snuggle with the person next to you (preferably somebody you know).
That’s also exceptionally handy to remember in the opposite situation: When you arrive on the plane and find that there’s nothing separating your flesh from the next passenger’s. Chances are 100 percent that the armrest is there—it’s just been swung upward.
And by the way: There should never be a fight over who gets the armrest. The middle-seat passenger gets them both. That’s the great unwritten rule. Consider how miserable that person is, and yield one of your armrests.
How to read fluently in other languages instantly
There’s an app for that.
When you find yourself in a country where all the signs, maps, instructions, and menus are written in another language, fear not. Thanks to clever smartphone apps, you can read German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and any of 85 other languages without a single lesson.
Install Google’s free Google Translate app on your iPhone or Android phone. Now you can enter something to translate in any of four ways:
• Type it.
• Write it with your finger (great if you’re standing in front of some sign where you don’t even know what the letters are, such as Arabic or Japanese).
• Take a picture of it with your phone’s camera.
Instantly, Google Translate translates it into your language. It’s the closest thing to a miracle you’ll see in a long time.
As a handy bonus, at your option you can download the dictionaries to your phone so that no Internet connection is required. That’s handy when you’re in another country where you’d be charged $700 per word for a data connection.
Spot your luggage at first sight
If you attach something bright and colorful to your bag, you’ll identify it much faster when you have to grab it at the baggage claim. You’ll also be far less likely to walk away with somebody else’s luggage by accident.
It doesn’t take an Einstein to think up this tip. It’s easy, it’s simple, and it works incredibly well.
Then how come so few people do it?
Go get a piece of ribbon, yarn, or colored tape, and put it on your bag right now. You’ll be glad.
Airline missed-flight policies: The Basics
If you fly much at all, sooner or later, something will go wrong. You’ll miss the flight, or the flight will be delayed, or it will cancel the flight out from under you. What are your rights?
They’re good to know. These, in general, are the policies of US airlines flying domestically.
• If you miss your flight. They’ll try to book you on the same airline’s next flight, usually at no charge. (Some airlines do charge a fee; for example, American charges $75.)
• If you have to change your flight. If you bought a nonrefundable ticket, you’ll pay a $200 change fee to book a different flight. You may also pay more or less for the new ticket.
• If your flight is delayed more than 4 hours. If it’s not the airline’s fault—bad weather, for example—they’ll try to rebook you on a later flight, same airline.
If it is the airline’s fault (mechanical problems, for example), they’ll do more. They may try to book you on another airline, give you a hotel voucher, or give you a refund.
• If you don’t use your return ticket. Nothing. You don’t get your money back, but there are no other repercussions.
• If your flight is delayed and you miss your connection. They’ll book you on another flight, even on a different airline if necessary.
• If you’re flying to a funeral. Last-minute fares are always the most expensive ones. So airlines used to offer bereavement fares—lower prices for people who have to travel for the death, or imminent death, of an immediate family member.
Most airlines have eliminated this kindness in the past couple of years. (Delta still offers special fares, or fares with travel-date flexibility; if you’re on the road and need to get home quickly, Delta will also waive the change fee for your return flight. You may have to supply the address of the hospital or funeral home.)
Cheaper hotel prices on your phone
If you need a last-minute hotel room—a few days in advance, or even same-day—you’ll save a lot of money if you book it using your smartphone. (Use an app like Hipmunk or Hotel Tonight, or even your phone’s Web browser.) If you book the room on your computer, you’ll pay much higher prices.
The reason: Hotels are desperate to avoid having empty, unrented rooms. They’d rather earn something for one of those rooms than nothing at all. So they post deeply discounted rates to phone apps and phone Web browsers in hopes of reaching the kind of mobile, spontaneous people who could fill up those otherwise unrented rooms. —Adam Goldstein
The dewrinkling chamber in every hotel
If your dressy shirt, jacket or dress got wrinkled in your luggage, all is not lost. In any hotel room more expensive than about $25 a night, there’s an iron and ironing board in the closet.
Is the wrinkly thing not something you can iron? Then hang it on the shower rod in the bathroom, turn on the shower at its hottest setting, leave the bathroom, and close the door. (Contrary to gut instinct, this trick doesn’t work if you’re in the shower; to produce the necessary steam, the water has to be hotter than you’d like it.)
After ten minutes, the steam and humidity relax the fibers of your clothing, letting the wrinkles fall away. Turn off the water, let the steam air out, and let the clothing cool before putting it on.
How to close your hotel-room curtains
Why would you book a hotel room? Well, one plausible reason is that you might want a place to sleep.
But between the noises in the hallway, the deafening air conditioning, the unfamiliarity of the bed, and the light let in by the curtains that never close all the way, there’s a pretty good chance you won’t sleep as well as you do at home.
You can, fortunately, fight back.
For example, you can make the curtains close. Sometimes they leave a gap, and sometimes they’re being blown open by the air conditioner. Either way, the sunlight will start blasting you awake at 5:45 A.M.
Here are three ways to pin the curtains closed before you turn out the light.
• Pull them so that they overlap, and then lean the desk chair against them, pinning them against the window.
• Grab a pen from the desk, and use its pocket clip to pin the curtains together at the bottom edge.
• For a more professional tool, travel with a binder clip (one of those big black metal spring-loaded paper clips). Use it to pin the curtains closed.
The hard part may be remembering to do this when you go to bed. At night, it might not occur to you to imagine how bright the curtain gap will be at the crack of dawn.
How to fold a jacket so it doesn’t get crumpled in your bag
This one’s a terrific old tailor trick. It’s a way to fold a blazer or suit jacket so that you can pack it into an overnight bag, carry-on bag, or rolling bag—without getting it rumpled or wrinkled.
1. Face the jacket as though you’re going to put it on backward. Insert your hands into the shoulder holes, so that the jacket hangs that way.
2. Bring your palms (and the jacket shoulders) together, as shown in Figure A.
3. Grab the collar that’s now above your left wrist (B). Pull it forward and around to the right, rotating your left wrist so that the left jacket shoulder turns inside out around the other shoulder (C). Withdraw your hands and grab the collar so that the jacket is hanging nicely. Give the whole thing a shake.
4. Slip the whole thing into a plastic bag, of the type that dry cleaners put on a newly cleaned shirt or coat. The slipperiness of the bag keeps your coat from bunching up against other things in your luggage and then wrinkling.
5. Fold the jacket in half to fit into your bag (D). If the suitcase has straps, use them to pin the bundle down, so it won’t move in transit.
As soon as you get to your destination, pull the jacket out of the bag, unfold it, and hang it up. (Keep the plastic bag; you’ll need it again when you travel home.) Nobody will ever suspect that it crossed the country wedged into luggage half its size.
Surviving Disney World
Show me a parent with young children, and I’ll show you an adult brain quivering with guilt and fear about Disney World. A visit there is an unforgettable experience for a kid, of course. But it’s also a trip to a crowded, expensive tourist trap where you’ll spend hours standing in lines for rides that are over in 90 seconds.
If you’re willing to make an expensive trip even more expensive, you can buy a Fast Pass. That’s a golden ticket that gives you an appointment to ride a certain ride at a certain time. At that point, you can skip the line.
You can also use the free alternative: the Disney World app. This incredible software reveals, on your smartphone, how long the line is at every ride in the park, in real time. As your young Disneyphiles pour off of one ride, you can consult the app to see which next stop has the shortest wait.
How to fight the tyranny of the duvet
A duvet (“doo-VAY”) is a big, thick, fluffy quilt. It’s soft. It’s usually white. It’s supposed to be luxurious and trendy.
It’s taking over hotel rooms worldwide. In the old days, your hotel bed was made of layers: a sheet, then a blanket or two, and then a bedspread.
Today? A duvet.
Apparently, the hotel industry never got the memo: A duvet may be big, thick, fluffy, and white, but it’s an all-or-nothing. You can’t peel back a layer of it when you get hot. You either boil or you freeze.
If you prefer something not quite as suffocating on top of you all night, what are you supposed to do?
Get clever, that’s what. Upon inspection, you’ll discover that the duvet has a cover, much the way a pillow has a pillowcase. What you’ve got is a thick quilt inside a huge cloth bag.
If you pull the quilt out of its cloth envelope, you’re left with just the cover—something like the world’s thinnest, softest sleeping bag. Throw the quilt on the floor, and use the cover as your blanket. Presto: You’ve got yourself what feels like a couple of sheets on top of you, and you’ll no longer burn to a crackly crisp from your own body heat.
Jet lag: The Basics
Jet lag is the grogginess, sleeplessness, and sometimes stomach problems that strike you when you fly to a distant time zone (from the US to Europe or Asia, for example). The sunlight and eating patterns of the new locale throw off your body’s circadian rhythms. For example, your eyes see the sun high in the sky, but your brain, stuck on your home schedule, still believes it to be the middle of the night.
To feel fully yourself again, it usually takes one day for each couple of time zones you’ve crossed; longer if you’re older.
Over the years, travelers, doctors, and lunatics have proposed all kinds of purported cures for jet lag. Things to eat, things to drink, small animals to sacrifice.
But if you’d like to know what really works, here’s what research studies suggest:
• Shift in advance. If you’re flying eastward: Start going to bed earlier and eating meals earlier. If you’re flying west: Start staying up and eating meals later. The idea is to simulate the new time zone before you get there.
Similarly, experts suggest that you set your watch to the new time zone on the plane—a psychological fake-out.
Finally, if it’s daytime where you’re going, try to stay awake on the plane. If it’s nighttime where you’re going, try to sleep. (Lots of people take melatonin pills for this purpose—take them an hour before your new bedtime, and prepare to be groggy for eight hours—but the studies on its ability to minimize jet lag are so far inconclusive.)
• Drink on the flight. Part of the problem, experts say, is the way plane travel dehydrates you. There’s about 12 percent humidity in an aircraft cabin—drier than a desert. Drink a lot during the flight (but not alcohol, which will dehydrate you further).
• Let the sun help you. Once you’ve landed, spend some time in the sun: in the afternoon if you flew to the east, in the morning if you flew to the west. That sunlight exposure helps shift your body’s internal clock to the new time zone.
• Take a hot bath. When you’re at your destination, a hot bath at bedtime can help you fall asleep at the new bedtime—because it’s relaxing and because your body temperature drops as you get out of the tub, which can make you sleepy.
• Diets don’t matter. Research shows that no particular kinds of foods affect jet lag.