TravelCommons
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Recorded in the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago on a rare full week in town after trips to Amsterdam and Kansas City. In this episode, an unusual flight delay makes us think about embracing the delay rather than fighting it, and snatching a couple hour vacation in Amsterdam allows us to explore some high and low culture. Listener comments include… Continue Reading →
Every once in a while you read something that makes you say out loud “What was that person thinking”? Indeed, after reading more and more of these articles, I stopped commenting on them. Passenger stupidity was no longer novel. However, on my recent flight to Amsterdam, I did experience a novel level of stupidity — new to me and the… Continue Reading →
Watching United Airlines cancel more than 600 flights at the beginning of Christmas week, I was glad that I was flying Frontier Airlines to Denver later in the week for a holiday ski vacation. The US Dept of Transportation’s latest Air Travel Consumer Report supported this feeling, showing Frontier with the lowest rate of canceled flights in November 2007. However,… Continue Reading →
Recorded in the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago in the middle of the one week a year I refuse to travel — Thanksgiving Day week. With environmental and economic reasons to reduce unneeded car trips, how easy is it to take a train to and from the airport? The answer is mixed and it doesn’t look to get any better… Continue Reading →
Northwestern University Library just launched web access to their Transportation Library Menu Collection, which includes “more than 400 menus from 54 national and international airline carriers, cruise ships, and railroad companies, with coverage from 1929 to the present.” Most of the menus are from George Foster, a Northwestern alum, who appears to have mostly flown first class on his travels… Continue Reading →
Recorded in the Gaithersburg, MD Marriott outside Washington, DC at the end of an intense week of travel that had me flying from the East Coast to the West Coast and then back east again… on four different airlines. With many airlines’ plummeting customer satisfaction scores, we ask the question “Who raves about their airline?” Recent trips allow me to… Continue Reading →
For the past couple of months, I’ve been wondering if it has been my bad luck with Hertz or the rental car industry trying to stretch their cars a bit farther. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal assuaged my paranoia. Though Hertz claims their fleet age hasn’t changed, the owners of National, Alamo, and Enterprise Rent A Car… Continue Reading →
Recorded in the TravelCommons studio outside Chicago, I’ve been bi-coastal since the last episode, bouncing between New York and San Francisco. A side trip down to Philadelphia yields a great street-food breakfast when I take the time to walk outside my hotel. Delays in my flights between O’Hare and LaGuardia airports cause me to dig for the FAA’s latest airport… Continue Reading →
Sitting in Philadelphia Airport drinking a pint of Hop Hog IPA beer from the Lancaster Brewing Company in nearby Lancaster, PA reminded me of a recent USA Today article about the growth of local food fare in airports. According to the article: “There was a trend toward national brands in the 1990s, but now there’s a desire for more balance… Continue Reading →