Incidents like the so called “volcano ashes flight ban” in Europe during the spring of 2010 are more severe than problems caused by weather conditions. A computer simulation signaled that time a high probability that dangerous particles stemming from a volcano in Iceland were present in the air. Obviously no government wanted to be responsible for a catastrophe caused by such particles. So they closed almost the complete European air space without any time frame for the end of the flight ban. After a number of days, and only in response to massive pressure from some of the biggest European airlines, governments bothered to check the real concentration of ashes in the air and reopened the air space gradually.
Pandemic diseases like SARS could also lead to such government actions. Riots may cause governments to close airspace and impede air travel as well. It is obvious, that air traffic chaos caused by political decisions is less predictable in scope and duration than problems resulting from weather conditions.

How to Protect Yourself?
What can you do to minimize the impact of such disruptions on you personally? You should take care of three aspects, which have a huge impact on your experience in case of travel chaos.

1. While you book the flight:
   If your journey runs smooth and without a problem, you do not need and will not miss a high quality score of your travel agency. You buy, pay and fly.
   But whenever a disruption occurs, you will feel a big difference between an overwhelmed customer service hotline and personalized service provided by your travel agent who receives timely information from the airlines, together with specific rules about changing schedules and refunding canceled tickets affected by the chaos. You will be in a position to discuss your options with a personal travel consultant – if you have one – and then to reach an informed decision accommodating your needs as much as possible.
2. Before departure of your Flight:
   You should try to confirm whether your plane will be flying on schedule before you go to the airport. In times of disruptions you should inquire already now about details and specific rules to postpone, reroute or cancel your flight. Then you decide what to do.
   The same applies before departure of the return flight. Check out, whether your flight operates according to the schedule, before hitting the road to the airport. Weight your options and decide to take the return flight as booked, to rebook or to use another option e.g. traveling by car or train. If you decide to use your flight in spite of the disruption, it is always good advice to have everything you really need in your hand luggage. Otherwise it may happen that imortant items are stuck in a stranded box half a continent away.
3. If you are hit by air traffic chaos on the road:
   From the moment you checked into your flight and received your boarding card, only the airline’s customer support staff can handle any inquiry. If you have missed a connection flight because the feeder flight was late, you need to contact the airline immediately and ask for a solution. They might offer a seat on another flight, possibly with another airline, or a hotel room and a seat one or more days later. Maybe you could finish your journey by rail, bus or car. In some cases the airline will even hire a taxi to bring you home.
   The same applies, if your luggage is missing. If you do not find a service official of the airline, ask an airport employee for support.

In Short:
Obviously it is better to avoid being directly affected by air traffic chaos. But if you booked your ticket through a good travel agency, your travel consultant will be an important source of information and advice, allowing you to take informed decisions. If a problem occurs after you started your flight, you have to rely for solutions on airline service staff. Ask for help immediately after the problem occurs.

There are two security relevant topics you should take care of: Your travel schedule and your luggage.

Airport Security and Your Travel Plan
If you travel from e.g. Manchester to San Diego, you will have several choices: You can look for a direct flight, or for a flight with only one transfer. Or you could look for the cheapest flight, or the flight with your preferred airline. In our example, there is no direct flight from Manchester to San Diego. But you could fly with Delta from Manchester to Atlanta, and connect there to a flight to San Diego. Or you could take a flight or train to London, and fly from there via Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York or other hubs to San Diego. This way you could choose between many connections, giving you flexibility in the timing of your trip, and possibly access to a cheaper fare. But what does that mean for the security of your journey, and how does airport security affect you in these cases?

Although you can check in your luggage in Manchester, and pick it again in San Diego, you will have to pass security screening every time you change a plane. They will have at least to check your hand luggage again, and look for dangerous items. The reason is, that somebody could deposit a weapon in the transit area, e.g. an airport worker, and somebody else could pick it up while changing the plane.

Airport Security and Your Luggage
It can be simple and almost painless to pass the security check at the airports, if you avoid dangerous or suspicious items in your hand luggage, and conform with all regulations regarding the luggage you check in. You have access to your hand luggage in your plain. You cannot carry items, which could be used as a weapon, like knifes, scissors, any tools like screw drivers, hammers, box cutters etc. And you should carry only small quantities of chemicals which could be explosives. I am talking about skin care products, tooth paste, but also beverages, even plain water.
In the luggage you check in, tools and sharp items are allowed. But some items will result in a personal check of your luggage by a security worker: This can be any bigger metallic item, also a battery. Even a glass of honey or olive oil may lead to a request that you should open your box. This is necessary, and cannot be avoided. The fasted and least disturbing attitude is to cooperate with the airport security people, and follow their directions.

Additional Tips
Avoid all jokes about security measures at the airport. If you tell the security officer that in your box is a bomb, he may believe you. And do not leave your luggage unattended. A box left in the airport which does not belong to a person, can result in an alarm, even up to the closure of the terminal by airport security services. And it is at least possible, that you will receive a big bill, if your forgotten piece of luggage triggered the alarm.

Conclusion:
To avoid unhappy encounters with airport security systems, you should fly as directly as possible, with few connecting flights. You should avoid dangerous or suspicious items in your hand luggage. If you have to carry suspicious things in your checked luggage, plan for enough time to pass the check. Never react with anger or stress, if a security official asks you to open your box. Never leave your luggage unattended. Check, whether you carry all luggage before you leave the airport.

You find a list of items you should avoid while flying at the Transportation Security Administration’s website at http://www.tsa.gov

There are three general types of travel insurance you should consider, if you are planning a trip:

1. Health related insurances covering the risk of sickness or an accident on the road
2. Luggage Insurance
3. Insurance covering change or cancellation penalties

I want to make a few points for each category.

Travel Health Insurance
You want to have coverage of medical expenses at home. On the road you need it even more. The first step before buying special health coverage for your trip is a check of the policy of your existing health insurance. On the road you need treatment costs, including hospitals, and transport back home, to be covered. Very helpful is an emergency phone number, where you can reach somebody familiar with the country you are in. He may know the right doctors, have an idea which hospitals are good, and have a relationship with them. This may allow a settlement eliminating the need to pay the hospital before you are admitted.
But please check the fine print. Mental conditions are almost always excluded from coverage. If you have an address in the country you visit, or if you are a citizen of the country you visit, travel insurance coverage may also be declined.

Luggage Insurance
This type of travel insurance is straightforward. If your luggage gets damaged or lost during transportation, you will be refunded. But check the fine print for excluded items. Expensive gear, like computers, cameras, jewelry and obviously cash are excluded. There may be also provisions that you cannot leave your luggage in a car, or that some items need to be kept in a safe etc.

Insurance Covering Change Penalties
A classic form of travel insurance covers the costs of changing or cancelling a trip for a predetermined set of reasons. The triggers may include sickness, pregnancy, death of a family member, unexpected unemployment and more. Check the policy of any insurance for these triggers, because they are not always the same.
Before insuring against a change penalty you need to have a hard look, whether you really need it. The trick is that insurance premiums are determined by the price you pay for your ticket or vacation package. But, on the other hand, penalties for changing or cancelling a ticket are generally lower for higher priced flights and packages. This means, if you do not take care, you may pay 50 Dollars to cover a risk of 100 Dollars in case you need to cancel your travel project. This does not make sense.
But it is also possible, that a policy of no change allowed and no refund policy is connected to your ticket. In this case, you may lose the whole price you paid for your package, if you become sick a few days before you travel. Under such rules travel insurance covering change and cancel penalties make definitively sense.

Four reasons:

1. With Bestprice.Travel you can create a reservation without immediately ordering a ticket. This they you can be sure that a flight will be available when you propose an appointment to your contact. And if you agree to a different appointment, you can change and cancel your reservation at no cost, as long as no ticket is issued.
2. You can book flights in all countries and between all countries.
3. We check the reservation before we issue a ticket. If we find an lower priced offer for the same flight, we show you that option before booking.
4. You have one person taking care of your needs around the flight, be it changes, seat reservations, special meals, rail and fly offers etc.

This way you get the best of two worlds: immediate reservation, and professional service taking care of everything around your flight.

Just a link to a report from Jetstar in Australia, which could shed some light on the recent Air France crash off Brazil.

It is good to know that people are still searching for the reason of that crash, und do not just file it under “unsolved mysteries.”

I found that information first at

http://www.twitter.com/airsafe

For a better travel experience.

Johannes

Same Plane, Different Prices
But in one aspect, there is no change: In the same plane, especially in economy class, there are on each flights passengers who paid for their ticket twice as much as the passenger with the cheapest flight ticket. So one and the same flight can be an expensive flight, and at the same time a cheap flight. The question is now: We just want to leave the expensive part of the plane to somebody else! What do we need to do so that these flights are for us cheap flights?

Time is the Key to Inexpensive Airfares
The main keyword to get the a cheap airfare is “time”. It is the time, when you make your flight reservation, the time when you buy your ticket, and the time, when you fly. If you buy your ticket too early, you may miss some specials. Airlines bring their specials into the market, when they have an idea of the market conditions. For example, now. September 2009, airlines publish their specials for the coming winter, the travel season after Christmas. It would have been a mistake to buy a ticket for a flight coming February already this May. This is especially true if you travel in low season months. On the other hand it is much easier to get cheap flights for February or November, than for August or December.
On the other hand, If you know you need to travel from December 22 to January 5, it is better to get a reservation as early as possible. This means in late January of beginning of February. For a cheap air ticket in the summer vacations you may start to look in November. But if possible, keep your reservation open, and do not buy a ticket until January. In January, after the end of the Christmas travel season, specials for the summer vacations are usually published.

Minimum Stay and Maximum Stay Important for Ticket Prices
The other important time feature of cheap flights is a stay over a weekend in your destination country, and the maximum time your ticket is valid.

Ethnic Fares
Air France and KLM demand for their Visit Friends and Family offers even a minimum stay of 2 weeks. Other airlines have similiar programs. Since it is in Europe problematic to use the nationality of passengers to decide who can get these fares, other features are used to define this market segment. The fares of theses programs are sometimes only slightly lower than normal fares, but sometimes there may be stark price difference. And, what is equally important, the fare rules are more relaxed. Generally, cheap air tickets are not refundable, and often no change of the ticket is possible in any way. Ethnic fares target families who have roots in two or more countries, especially in Europe and in Africa, Asia or Latin America.
Ethnic fares and their cousins, like fares for military service people, are not offered in booking engines.

Cheap is not Enough
This brings another consideration on the table: We are not really looking for cheap flights. We want flights with well maintained planes, with an airline which will be still around when we want to travel home again, on a way as direct as possible, and that for a low price.

Add Hidden Cost into the Picture
You need to add to the ticket price some hidden cost, which are often forgotten. We have developed Maximum Value for Your Airfare to help you find and evaluate these less than obvious expenses. It includes a checklist, asking the right questions, and while you fill your answers in, it does the math for you. This way it is a real timesaver in itself.

We are developing a new infoproduct for those, who use the internet to book their own flights:

Maximum Value for Your Airfare

It is a step by step video guide to end the guesswork which ticket is best for you, and where to find it.
By registering now for the free version, which is almost ready, you will qualify for a free upgrade to the paid version, when time comes.

http://maxValue4Airfare.com

I just ask for you input and feedback.

Yours

Johannes Stockburger

PS: I just added to the product a nice little script calculating for you the real cost of a flight.

They allow their customers for international flights:

• 1 piece of luggage weighting less than 50 pound (23 kg)

If you want to carry a second piece, they charge you 50 Dollars. This fee is payable directely to Delta at check in time.
For traffic inside the US Delta charges a fee for luggage for some time. That fee is 15 Dollars for the first piece, and 25 Dollar for a second piece of luggage.
This applies also for stopover flights for ongoing travel from the first stop in the US. Check the details of the new rules at Delta’s Website.

PS: If you are travelling a lot with Delta, you could use their SkyMiles program to avoid these extra charges.

All price examples include already taxes and travel agents fees.
They show your total cost of the ticket

Frankfurt-Boston,February 25 to March 5. 410 Euro

Munich-Hong Kong March 15 to March 27 515 Euro

Please check for more prices and availabilities:

http://engine.bestprice.travel

You will find similiar offers from Germany to

• New York
• Boston
• Philadelphia
• Washington
• Miami
• Denver
• Houston
• Los Angeles
• San Francisco
• Seattle
   
• Bejing
• Shanghai
• Hongkong
• Tokyo
   
• Capetown
• Johannesburg
   
• Bangalore
• Chennai
• Delhi
• Hyderabad
• Mumbai

You may book these flights at

http://engine.bestprice.travel

The specials are valid for flights from Hamburg, Berlin, Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich return flights in World Traveller (economy-class). Last date to issue a ticket is February 16. Last possible travel dated is June 30. Open jaw flights in China, South Africa, India or the US are possible.
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