If you've ever flown in or out of a busy air hub, you know how crowded the skies can get with planes. Whenever I'm flying, I always find it fascinating to watch other planes in the sky as well, zipping past with their strobe lights flashing.
When BT Editor in Chief Nina Willdorf sent me this video, I was delighted and a little surprised. It shows the flight paths of the major airlines worldwide in a 24-hour period. Watching it, you really get a sense of global travel patterns as streams of planes jump back and forth between continents, especially between Europe and North America, and Asia and North America.
Check it out for yourself:
Why you won't find American's fares on Expedia or Orbitz
Expedia and Orbitz have stopped showing nearly all American Airlines flights. If you want to book tickets on American, you have to go directly to the airline's site, aa.com, or shop at other major online travel agencies and search engines. Expedia and Orbitz are battling with American about who controls the search results you see. The backstory says a lot about how airlines want vacationers to pay even higher prices for fares. Here's the gist: American is jealous of Southwest, which has earned fatter profits over the years. American is especially jealous of how Southwest sells its tickets only through southwest.com, while preventing online travel agencies from selling its tickets. Southwest saves money by selling directly to its passengers, because it doesn't have to pay fees to middlemen. Meanwhile, every time American posts a ticket on a site like Expedia, the airline has to pay about 10 percent in fees. Some of those fees go to the online travel agency, and some go to a middleman company that runs computer databases. In contrast, every time a ticket is sold through American's own website, all of the traveler's money goes to the airline. Even better for American, whenever a flier shops for a ticket directly on its aa.com site, the airline can up-sell the person on additional services, such as roomier seats. American decided not to fully copy Southwest. It didn't want to stop listing its fares with all online travel sites—which provide about 17 percent of its revenue. So it came up with a half-way measure. The airline invented its own computer system, called Direct Connect, and asked Expedia and Orbitz to use it instead of the middleman's computer services. This would give American the best of both worlds: The airline would continue to have its fares listed on major online travel sites, but it would no longer have to pay a fee of up to $4 per ticket to a middleman for its computer services to do so. Plus, its new computer system would let it upsell vacationers on profitable services. But Expedia and Orbitz don't like Direct Connect. They don't like it for several reasons, but the most important one for budget travelers is that American's planned new system would ultimately make tickets more expensive—driving business down. Tickets sold by online agencies like Expedia and Orbitz are 45 percent cheaper than ones sold by traditional travel agencies, says a survey by UBS quoted by the New York Times. American's new model would push up prices higher. Expedia worried that the next shoe to drop would be for American to stop providing fares to it as well, not just Orbitz. So after American recently pulled its fares from Orbitz, Expedia stopped showing American's fares in solidarity with its competitor. It's an effort to team up and stop the airlines before they gain momentum and take actions that will push up prices. Other airlines are watching the battle closely. On December 17, Delta, for one, stopped allowing three sites—CheapOAir.com, OneTravel.com, and BookIt.com—from listing its flights. What do you think? MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL An airfare search with a sense of humor: Hipmunk The best flight search tool you've never heard of: ITA Software For the lowest airfare, study says book eight weeks in advance
Technology fails travelers
I'm normally an enthusiastic advocate of smart phone technology as an aid to travelers, but a recent glitch in iPhone software is giving me pause. Countless iPhone alarm clocks failed to go off on Sunday and Monday mornings, thwarting travelers' plans, as reported in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. According to the Times: "Erick Piller, a student who uses his iPhone as a primary alarm, said in an e-mail that he missed a scheduled flight [Monday] morning after Apple assured the media that the alarm would begin work again on Monday morning. 'I set a nonrepeating alarm for 3:30 a.m. Monday, but when I woke up by chance at 4 a.m., it hadn't gone off," Mr. Piller said. "I ended up missing a flight by 15 minutes." I, myself was a victim of snoozefest2011, and almost missed an early morning flight out of Palm Springs on Sunday morning. My husband had diligently set two iPhone alarms for 4:30am (a 3G and a 3GS), neither of which went off. (We randomly woke up at 5am, thanks to our toddler, and just barely made our flight.) I rushed to blame my poor husband, but the blame lies with Apple, which experienced a similar problem with iPhone 4 during Daylight Savings Time. Apparently, Apple is on the case, but bloggers around the globe were quick to devise workarounds. One quick solution, shared via Twitter (check the hashtag #iphonealarm), was to set a recurring alarm, as opposed to a one-off, non-repeating alert. That fix seemed to work for many—and as of this morning, reports are showing that alarms are again ringing—but for this particular technophile, I'm leaning toward regressing to old-school technology from now on: a trusty, old-school, properly ringing clock. Blackberry vs. Iphone: Budget Travel puts two smart phones to the test Readers' favorite apps What worries you when you travel? Help us identify the coolest small town in America! Vote now!
Readers' best sign photos
Instead of dreamy destination shots, this time we're embracing the funny side of travel. From your submitted photos of bizarre, evocative, and lost-in-translation signs, we selected 27 that range from retro neon lettering in Utah to a Mumbai warning to curb honking addition. See the slide show. RECENT READER SLIDE SHOWS Japan | Skylines | Caribbean Sea STILL IN SEARCH OF... We're now collecting your photos of coastal views. Upload them through myBudgetTravel, tag them, and check back in the coming weeks for a slide show of the best submissions.
