When looking for airline tickets, do you think about all the hidden fees or whether you’re allowed to sneak your super-sized “carry-on” onto the plane? Travel clothing seller Travelsmith has published a very handy spreadsheet online called “Carry-On/Check-In Luggage Guidelines.” You can get it in PDF form, which means you can easily view it on …
Continue reading ‘Fee or free? Spreadsheet makes checking airline info a snap’ »
Let’s talk about body piercings today. No no, don’t run away. If you don’t have any, read on with morbid curiosity. If you have them, please stay, because this affects you directly as it relates to going through airport security. Do you wear body jewelry in private places and you’re worried that you may set …
Continue reading ‘Heavy Metal: Airport security and body piercing jewelry’ »
Travel guru Chris Elliott posted a link to the following article at the AOL Travel site, called “Confessions of a ticket agent.” In essence, it was a first-hand account of some of the more amusing and interesting stories about life as an airline ticketing agent. For Travelite readers, though, one section, titled “Payback for rude …
Continue reading ‘Be nice to the travel agent, or your luggage may get “lost”!’ »
In case you hadn’t heard, the Clear Pass system (which I’ve mentioned before) is going bye-bye. If you go to FlyClear.com right now, you see the following message: Clear Lanes Are No Longer Available. At 11:00 p.m. PST on June 22, 2009, Clear will cease operations. Clear’s parent company, Verified Identity Pass, Inc. has been …
“Ideally packed!” That’s what a London Gatwick Airport security agent told me when my bag got tagged for a manual inspection. She was completely impressed because she couldn’t believe how efficient and well-organized my carry-on bag was! [If you’ve ever had one of those, you know that they take everything out of your bag. It …
Continue reading ‘The Ultra-Minimalist Packing List: How I Packed for Europe’ »
It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and we leave for Europe tomorrow. In the meantime, we went to our local post office this evening to use their Automatic Postal Center machine to weigh our carry-on bags so that we could meet the stringent weight restrictions on Virgin Atlantic. The verdict? My bag: 12 pounds …
Thirteen pounds. That’s the weight limit for your carry-on bag when you fly Virgin Atlantic. Forget trying to smoosh everything into your compact carry-on bag, the weight restriction turns “traveling light” into a whole new ballgame. We’ll be heading to Europe later this year and flying Premium Economy to London Heathrow, and our challenge will …
Based on the blog comments and email I’m getting, there seems to be a lot of questions and concern about the use of bottles in carry-on luggage. Instead of having these hidden in email exchanges or buried in the blog comments I thought I’d revisit this topic again. Kelle shared this experience: One thing about …
Continue reading ‘More on bottles (or eyedropper bottles, take 2)’ »
[Updated December 2, 2008] You will soon be able to keep your laptop in your case when you go through airport security checkpoints. The Transportation Security Administration announced last week that they will begin allowing laptops to be screened through their X-ray machine while they are still in bags. The catch? The bags have to …
This is just a short post for anyone who paid their $100 to the TSA to get a Clear registered traveler card that lets you go through an express line at the airport security checkpoint. A laptop containing uncrypted data for 33,000 customers (of 200,000 applicants) of the program was stolen from a locked office …