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Runway Girl Network has an… interesting/alarming/promising story about a new development in airline interiors – soon airlines will be able to charge you for using the at-seat power plugs . It's just the next terrible addition to the nickle-and-diming price structure that airlines seem to be in love with these days. But given the horrible direction airlines are taking their Economy and domestic First cabins ( removing all seatback entertainment , shoving in extra rows, shrinking toilets , etc) I guess the only thing left to say here is, "Welp, I guess I prefer a pay-to-plug seat over one with no power at all…" ( Quick sidebar here: can I just say how much I love that JetBlue has bucked this terrible trend? They're actually installing larger screens in Economy and they have blazing-fast, free Wi-Fi ). Oh but the horrors don't end there: a related invention from KID-Systeme has circuitry in the plug itself to let you charge for free in exchange for watchi

UPDATE (Nov 2021) We're in our 3rd year as a New York Community Solar customer and I wanted to share a quick real-world update: On average, our panels save about 325kg of CO 2 per month - enough for one person to fly one-way from New York to Denver, in Economy .  Yes, there are definitely some questions 1 here, but I still wanted to do the back-of-the-napkin calculation to see – very approximately – how many months of solar it would take to "earn" one flight. Google flights recently added a CO 2 emissions column to its listings spreadsheet downloaded from our Community Solar account ==  Original Nov 2019 post: I fly a lot and yet I absolutely care about the environment. I try to stay big picture and know that my decision to live car-free in a big city and not have children puts me well below the national CO 2 average, but still, my flying definitely makes me look for ways I can do more. When we lived in San Francisco, we installed solar panels on our condominium

The already-expensive AirTrain to JFK is getting a steep price hike from $5 to $7.75 effective November 1st. (To quote a visiting friend, "there's not much public about your public transportation, is there?"). They're also raising the Uber/Lyft surcharge at the same time. For years you've been able to buy a 10-ride pass for $25 – half off the $5 fare. The card can be used 4 times in rapid succession before it triggers an 18-minute waiting period, so it's feasible to use one card for groups of 4 or fewer. Unfortunately, according to 2nd Avenue Sagas and commenters on Streetsblog , the MTA is drastically shortening the 10-ride Metrocard's validity period down to one month in lieu of hiking the price to $38.75. The official meeting notes are here , but there's no word on what happens after the switchover if you have an already-activated card with say, 5 months remaining on it. Since "affordable fares for airport workers" is the general

UPDATE (Autumn 2021): A new site calle LugLess will help you price out all of your options for shipping versus checking.   That's a picture my shiny roll-aboard Hideo Wakamatsu bag being unboxed after the FedEx delivery person dropped it off at my apartment. We just finished an awesome bucket-list trip with my parents to see the fall foliage in Vermont , so the bag is heavy with maple syrup, local spirits , souvenirs, and lots of dirty clothes. Our trip involved a one-way car rental and a flight back home to JFK from Burlington on a Delta commuter plane, so we had a few decisions to make about how to get all of this delicious and heavy stuff home that's not allowed in a carry-on. None of us is a Delta elite or Delta credit card holder, so checking a bag meant ponying up $30 and then waiting around for the bag to show up on the carousel, which at JFK can mean anything from 5 to 45 minutes. In addition to the waiting, it also means more bags to schlep onto the AirTrain and

A few JetBlue news nuggets: JetBlue is going to start serving 2019's most important beverage: hard seltzer They're adding Showtime, Spotify, and a bunch of other " bingeable " media onboard  They're completely leaving Mexico City They're forming a partnership with Norwegian Their new A320s started arriving , and you can now pair your phone with the seatback TV For real, if White Claw hard selter ran for president right now, it would win. JetBlue is actually going to serve one of their competitors, but it's good to see them keeping up with food and bev trends.  The Mexico City news is a bit disappointing but not surprising, since our flight there in February was practically empty. But the Norwegian thing is puzzling. Are they looking to eventually buy Norwegian if/when they go bankrupt like so many of the other transatlantic Low Cost Carriers? I've been super excited about JetBlue's entry into the transatlantic market, but this mig

Gary Leff has a hilarious story today about a self-proclaimed "social media influencer" who faked a letter from Cathay Pacific claiming she was entitled to free upgrades to Business Class due to her large number of followers on social media. Well, the staff at the airport in New York didn't buy it and straight-up kicked her off the flight . We've all seen these days how your follower count can greatly increase your chance of landing jobs, winning online contests, and even help you get acting gigs. Horror stories of entitled "influencers" abound, as do everyman hero stories of shops and inns who defiantly stand up to this entitlement. I feel like some of this social engineering is up wrapped around people's own egos – like it becomes a little game of measuring your looks and charm and popularity by how much you can get for free. There's heaps of crappy advice online about how to use this approach for free upgrades on airlines, but it looks l

Yes, I was grumpy a while back and wanted to get rid of my Amex Platinum because its ever-shrinking benefits just weren't worth the high annual fee. Then, when I called to cancel, they just straight-up offered me 50,000 points to keep the card. Today they announced they'll be adding trip delay coverage starting the the first of January. This great news on top of the 5 points per dollar on airfare will finally make this my no-brainer card for charging all of my paid flying. I wonder if they're going to pull back on the 50k retention bonuses now that new card features are being announced... Feels to me like that big bonus was just to hold on to people until Amex could come up with some ways to revamp the card a bit.

Some good news for people with the new Apple Card – Uber, Walgreens , and Duane Reade all get you 3% cash back now! I actually just bought a new iMac this week and had to do some math – use my husband's Apple Card for 3% or try to earn points on another card? If you take the widely-accepted average point value of 2¢ each, the Apple Card is getting you the equivalent of 6 points per dollar spent , making it fairly unbeatable. I've mentioned before that I keep a Google spreadsheet of all of my rewards and that I track two values for each reward: CPM high (Cents per mile/point) and CPM low – the former based on the cash cost of the flight I actually took, and the latter based on the flight I would have taken if I'd actually had to pay with my own money. I've always valued the "true" CPM to be somewhere in between the two numbers. Well, just for fun, I decided to add a few columns to my spreadsheet to calculate the overall average CPM of my reward fligh

A new high-speed rail link opened between Guangzhou and Hong Kong in late 2018. We've never been to mainland China, and for us train nerds, this was a perfect excuse to go. Hong Kong Station Exterior First off, Americans need a visa to go to mainland China . We were originally thinking we'd just do a day trip, but when I started checking a few Hong Kong transportation forums, it seemed clear there is no way to get a day trip visa issued on the spot in Hong Kong . We decided to get the 10 year, multiple entry visa so we could go back again without having to do any further paperwork. There's a consulate here in New York City, and I did all of the visa paperwork in person. We were flying in to Hong Kong and taking the train into Guangzhou, which actually caused me some trouble with the people at the consulate . They are very focused on having your flight information for your arrival into mainland China, and we had none. The train tickets are only available 30 days in

I've complained about the Amex Platinum a lot recently . My most recent mis-adventure trying to use the Delta credit was sorta the straw that broke the camel's back, though. There have just been way too many cutbacks and nothing new or exciting to replace them. I gave Amex a call and asked to cancel my card. I cited my reasons, and also let them know that the card's one "killer feature" – 5x on airfare – isn't a slam-dunk with me because it doesn't offer trip delay insurance like the Chase Sapphire does. I'm not going to book, for example, our January Mexico trip on the Amex because it so reliably gets screwed up by New York winter weather. Renewed for another season The rep was quick to quote back to me exact totals for all of the card's benefits I'd used, but the bottom line for me is that the trend right now is negative – all cuts, no improvements. I asked straight up if the was a retention offer available and there was: $500 stat

As I've mentioned before, Amex has been slowly devaluing and eliminating many of the Platinum and Gold cards' perks. Specifically, they closed the well-publicized loophole that allowed you to spend your annual Airline Fee Reimbursement buying Delta gift cards. This was a popular and relatively easy way to offset part of the card's annual fee so there has been lots of uproar online about this change. This FlyerTalk thread is tracking and aggregating people's individual experiences trying to use the credit on other types of Delta purchases. It seems like the consensus for the new way to spend the credit is this: buy a plane ticket that's less than $250, apply a $50 gift card to the purchase, and ta-da! the remainder of the ticket counts as a fee, and is reimbursed by Amex . I read through the summary and it seemed like our upcoming flight from Burlington to New York City would be a perfect place to try it. First, I bought a $50 Delta gift certificate from th

Most of my trip reports are about getting to a great place, but in the case of the Shiki Shima, the trip itself is the destination. The trip was, in a word, amazing . Seriously, 11 out of 10. They took Japanese omotenashi hospitality and added an extra helping of "surprise and delight". It's that surprise part that I'm worried about writing this. I don't want to chronicle every little thing because then each of those surprise moments is robbed of its delight. I'll do my best to walk the line between telling too much and too little. Background The gorgeous, Ken Okuyama-designed train is relatively new and it's still so popular that there's a quarterly lottery for who gets to buy tickets. The website to enter the lottery is in English and Japanese, and service onboard the train is only available in those two languages. (Tour operators in Thailand and Hong Kong occasionally do full buyouts of the train and offer all-Thai/all-Chinese options,