A survey from from the Travel Leaders Group seeks to find “best practices” for airline etiquette as answered by other frequent travelers:

If you are seated in the middle seat on an airplane and the people on either side of you staked out the armrests, what would you do?
Say something directly to your seatmates. 27.9%
Call a flight attendant and let him/her handle the situation. 2.6%
Sit quietly and say nothing. 48.9%
Not sure. 20.6%

If the person in the airline seat in front of you invaded your personal space with an article of clothing and/or their hair so it was directly in front of you, what would you do?
Say something directly to the person. 68.9%
Call a flight attendant and let him/her handle the situation. 9.3%
Sit quietly and say nothing. 13.0%
Not sure. 8.8%

If the person in the airline seat in front of you reclined their seat so much that you were unable to lower you tray table or perhaps unable to open up a laptop, what would you do?
Say something directly to the person. 55.4%
Call a flight attendant and let him/her handle the situation. 21.8%
Sit quietly and say nothing. 15.1%
Not sure. 7.7%

If the person in the airline seat in front of you ignored crew member instructions to have their seat back upright for takeoff and/or landing, what would you do?
Say something directly to the person. 13.4%
Call a flight attendant and let him/her handle the situation. 28.1%
Sit quietly and say nothing. 50.1%
Not sure. 8.4%

If you were on a flight next to a person who insisted on trying to talk to you the entire flight, what would you do?
Use a book or other reading materials to try to limit the conversation. 38.1%
Put on headphones and use a book or other reading materials to limit conversation. 18.9%
Engage them in conversation for the whole flight. 12.2%
Specifically let that person know that you would prefer not to talk. 10.4%
Put on headphones to try to limit the conversation. 8.7%
Pretend to sleep to try to limit the conversation. 7.4%
Put on headphones and pretend to sleep. 4.3%

If you were on a flight with someone who talked so loudly that half the plane could hear them, what would you do?
Say something directly to the person. 14.4%
Call a flight attendant and let him/her handle the situation. 27.9%
Sit quietly and say nothing. 36.0%
Not sure. 21.7%

What would you do if it appeared parents of a screaming child aboard a plane were not making any attempt to comfort/control their child?
Say something directly to the person. 7.9%
Call a flight attendant and let him/her handle the situation. 46.7%
Sit quietly and say nothing. 30.6%
Not sure. 14.8%

Today, United Airlines resumed B787 service for the first time in four months with two flights, Houston (IAH) – Chicago (ORD) on ship 3903 and Houston (IAH) to Newark (EWR) on ship 3901. United plans to use the 787s exclusively on domestic routes before resuming international service on June 10th with the launch of Denver (DEN) – Tokyo (NRT) service. Existing routes will also see 787 service this summer including Houston-London, Los Angeles-Tokyo, Los Angeles-Shanghai and Houston-Lagos. United also reported this morning that four of its six 787s have been fixed, and that the remaining two aircraft will have battery modifications later in the week.

United tweeted along with pics of the relaunch, including one of Boeing CEO W. James McNerney, Jr. and United CEO Jeff Smisek buckled in and ready for take-off on Flight 1.

Streaming music service Spotify recently commissioned psychologist Dr. Rebecca Spelman to create a playlist to calm listener nerves while flying. Spotify notes that Dr. Spellman found that breathing in time to harmonious songs with a low and steady tempo drastically lowers heart rate and blood pressure, which in turn reduces anxiety. A tempo of 60 BPM (beats per minute) was found to be the most soothing. The song closest to 60 BPM…Adele’s Someone Like You at 67 BPM. As per the study:

Travel anxiety is caused by irrational thoughts where the threat is exaggerated and inappropriate. Music that stimulates both the logical left and emotional right sides of the brain is said to stimulate the limbic system, which processes negative memories and emotions, which in turn helps people think in a more balanced, rational way suppressing anxiety.  Piano on The Beach by Liborio Conti works using this method of music therapy but must be listened to with headphones to be effective. Music which is harmonious and emotive is generally regarded as the best at achieving this type of stimulation, which induces Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR). This tried and tested method was originally developed for treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and is incredibly powerful at calming and relaxing the mind and body.

Perhaps not overly helpful for the road warriors and mileage runners, but this could be quite useful for anxious family members and friends…or perhaps you’ve recently had a scary experience of your own and now have a fear of flying.

See and listen to the full Spotify list here.

After two taxis, a border crossing, a smuggling tunnel, and four plus hours of travel, a bucket of KFC from Egypt makes its way to excited customers in Gaza. From The New York Times:

Formerly called Kentucky Fried Chicken, a KFC franchise opened in El Arish, just over Gaza’s southern border, in 2011, and in the West Bank city of Ramallah last year. That, along with ubiquitous television advertisements for KFC and other fast-food favorites, has given Gazans a hankering for Colonel Sanders’s secret recipe. “It’s our right to enjoy that taste the other people all over the world enjoy,” said the entrepreneur, Khalil Efrangi, 31, who started Yamama a few years ago with a fleet of motorbikes ferrying food from Gaza restaurants, the first such delivery service here.

Check out the full article here.

Courtesy NYT

Ian Salisbury of MarketWatch has an article today titled 10 Things Cruise Lines Won’t Tell You. Most frequent travelers (or even just news followers) are probably aware of most of these including the risk of catching norovirus, the economic reasons behind on-board alcohol limitations and partnered tour guides, and the fact that US labor laws don’t apply while out at sea. Check out the full list and article here.

Related – On the other hand, see today’s other cruise related article from the AP – Cruises get good buzz from new ships, overhauls

I recently received a link to the 2013 US Airways media kit, essentially a sales pitch for potential US Airways Magazine advertisers.  Some interesting facts:

US Airways strangely considers several locations only served via their partners to be their “International Getaway Destinations”, including Sydney, Istanbul, Beijing, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Additionally, St. Thomas, Rochester, and Long Island MacArthur are considered some of “US Airways Top Markets”.

Some demographic details for US Airways travelers…of which 70% are married and 52% make 100K+ a year:

On my United flight to Denver on Friday morning I heard a passenger request two Tylenols for a bad headache. I was pretty surprised when the flight attendant went into a medical kit and pulled out two pills for the passenger. Who knew you could request free headache medicine in-flight when almost everything else comes with a fee these days. Are there other freebies we don’t know about? Randomly, Christine Sarkis from Smarter Travel, published an article yesterday titled Free things on planes you didn’t know you could get…

Picture courtesy of www.letsflycheaper.com

IdeaWorks has once again released their annual Switchfly Reward Seat Availability rankings and Delta is once again at the very bottom of the list, though this year they are joined by US Airways in a two-way tie. As per the press release:

Air Berlin, Southwest, and Virgin Australia placed in the top 6 for the 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 editions of the reward survey. For 2013 Air Berlin, GOL, and Southwest share first place with outstanding 100% scores, with every flight queried in the survey providing reward seats. The list of carriers was expanded to 25 for 2013 with the addition of Air Asia, Air China, and AviancaTaca. The largest year-over-year improvement were registered by global players Air France/KLM (up 22.2 points) and Emirates Airlines (up 12.1 points). AirTran Airways (a unit of Southwest) continued upward movement with a 7.9 point increase and a nearly 50 point increase since 2011. Comparing total average result for the same 22 airlines included in the 2012 and 2013 surveys reveals a minor half point drop for 2013. Thus, overall reward availability is largely unchanged for the global airline industry.Continuing last year’s theme, survey findings indicate frequent fliers are better served by the reward programs offered by value-oriented airlines. The average among the seven value- oriented airlines in the survey was 96% which is up from the 2012 result of 93.5%. The other more traditional carriers in the survey group registered 61.5% which is slightly lower than the 2012 average of 62.9%.

In terms of when to find the best availability, the survey does confirm what many of us already know.  Legacy carriers release more award seats as the travel date gets closer and last minute travelers may have a much higher chance of snagging their ideal award if they can wait until a few days or weeks before departure.

Now, as Gary likes to rightly point out each year, the results are completely flawed! They do NOT take into account the value of each individual award (a short hop on Southwest surely can’t be compared to an international trip on AA) or the cost of acquiring miles in each program. They are also only reviewing online availability, which for a carrier like US means that they have a lower score than United, though they really have identical award space. With all that said, for their own metal awards, Delta probably truly does belong at the very bottom (even-though I’ve had some great recent luck with low level awards). Unfortunately for the general public (but good for us), the survey will once again be reported on the nightly newscasts and the advice given will be to focus on accumulating miles with the lost cost carriers… I’ll take United at 80% and AA at 48.6% any day over JetBlue at 88.6%.

Consider this the next time something doesn’t look or sound right to you, maybe you’re not crazy! According to Lurer.com, a passenger on a LOT Polish Airlines flight from Warsaw (WAW) to JFK spotted what he believed was a leak of some sorts as the plane was taxing. He promptly alerted the flight crew, who concurred and notified the pilots. The plane returned to the terminal and a leak was identified and fixed before the plane was allowed to takeoff six hours later. LOT is now determining how to reward the passenger. Only English version of the story here.

Of interest to business travelers, the LA Times travel section has posted a question that I’ve been asked by readers a number of times (though they usually want to know the risk of the company clawing back the ticket)…

Question: As a human resources consultant, I sometimes receive travel inquiries from one of my clients. Here is one: An employee, using a company credit card, purchased a $1,200 airline ticket for a business trip. The ticket is in her name and is nontransferable. She then resigned from the company, and the company (which is paying for the ticket) contacted the airline. The airline initially told them there was no problem but later said no changes (regardless of fees paid) could be made to the ticket and even added the comment “Guess you just gave your former employee a nice trip.” While my client understands that advance tickets have restrictions, it seems impossible that the change of employee name (with change fee) cannot be implemented and that the ticket, paid for by the company, remains in the possession of, and for exclusive use by, the former employee. Can you help?

See their answer here.

Have any experience with the above? How did your company handle the situation if you genuinely did not foresee leaving prior to your planned trip?

Interactive travel guide website triposo (a very handy tool by the way), released the results of their bad behavior abroad survey. Of the 700 respondents from 62 countries, it seems that everyone is in agreement that they get a little crazy when overseas. Just how crazy may surprise you..hopefully most of these people aren’t traveling for work and I’m assuming they haven’t seen an episode of Locked Up Abroad!

Social (Mis)behavior

No hotel room? No problem! Seventeen percent of respondents admitted to hooking up in a public place while abroad. Others indicated that body language was sufficient for intercultural communication, with 16 percent admitting to a hook-up with someone who did not speak their language. Overall, 70 percent of respondents admitted to some sort of fraternization while abroad. Here are our key findings:

• 25 percent admit to a one-night stand.

• 6 percent admitted to cheating on a significant other. (Men were twice as likely to cheat.)

• 5 percent broke up with a significant other.

• 6 percent admitted to soliciting sex. (All of these respondents were men.)

Drunken Behavior

60 percent of our respondents admitted to partaking in some sort of adventure that was fueled by alcohol. Unfortunately not all of these adventures had a happy ending, as 11 percent admitted that drinking led to hurting themselves or someone else. Others reported drinking led to some unsavory public behavior abroad:

• 20 percent admitted to urinating in public.

• 10 percent admitted to vomiting in public.

• 5 percent say drinking abroad led to naked escapades in public.

Just Plain Bad Behavior

Some respondents told us about illegal or questionable behavior abroad, including more than 20 percent who admitted to stealing while in a foreign country, even if it was just a hotel towel. Other findings include:

• 15 percent admitted to buying or selling drugs.

• Almost 14 percent admitted to some form of trespassing.

• 6 percent admitted to smuggling contraband.

• Less than 2 percent report being arrested, though more than 10 percent reported being held at the border.