Bob’s View of Travel

Comair flight 4949 from New York JFK to Philadelphia was late 92.59 percent of the time during the month of October 2007 according to the Department of Transportation. Gee sounds like 2 flights all month for this flight were on time. Consider taking the train, actually consider taking another airline.

Once again airlines are thinking of ways not to raise prices but in reality make you pay more money for your flight. Here’s the new Southwest Airlines Program in regards to checked luggage effective Jan 29.

“This will affect less than 2% of our customers,” Mainz said. “In that sense, it’s really not going to be a major impact to the customers.”

Southwest Airlines Co., seeking to increase revenue without boosting fares, will begin charging customers who want to check more than two pieces of luggage.

Southwest now allows three checked pieces per passenger, with size and weight limitations for each bag. Starting Jan. 29, a third checked bag will carry a $25 fee, with higher charges for additional pieces, according to the airline’s website.

The shift will help free luggage-hold space to carry more cargo — an area the largest low-fare carrier is targeting to raise revenue, spokesman Chris Mainz said. The fees themselves probably won’t generate much revenue, he said, without being specific.

“This will affect less than 2% of our customers,” Mainz said. “In that sense, it’s really not going to be a major impact to the customers.”

Bob says you know you booked a cheap airline when:

The air sickness bags have the Lord’s Prayer printed on them.

A telephone with a really long cord connects the plane to the control tower.

Jumper Cables are dangling from the door to the cockpit.

In a case that could affect passengers delayed on planes at airports nationwide, an industry trade group is challenging New York’s law requiring airlines to provide food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers stuck on the ground for more than three hours.

New York lawmakers passed the “airline passenger bill of rights” — the first law of its kind in the nation — after a series of delays last winter at John F. Kennedy International Airport that left some passengers stranded for more than 10 hours with no food or water, overflowing toilets and no air conditioning.

“The only question in this case is whether the state of New York can tell airlines what to provide,” said Robert Span, an attorney for the Air Transport Association.

The industry group is trying to stop the law from taking effect on Jan. 1, arguing that only the federal government can regulate airline services.

State legislators and passenger rights advocates said they pushed for the law because federal regulators have long failed to address what they say has become a chronic problem, particularly at New York airports.

“I would love for Washington to step forward, set a standard for the whole country and take care of business once and for all,” said Michael Gianaris, a Queens Democrat who sponsored the legislation in the state Assembly. “They didn’t do it. We had to step forward as the state which is dealing with the greatest delays in the country.”

A recent federal report showed that about 24 percent of flights nationally arrived late in the first 10 months of the year, which was the industry’s second-worst performance record since comparable data began being collected in 1995.

JFK had the third-worst on-time arrival record of any major U.S. airport through October, behind the New York area’s other two major airports, LaGuardia and Newark, according to the report.

In a court hearing Tuesday, airline industry association lawyers said they’re worried that if New York’s law is upheld, other states will follow with their own laws, which would result in a confusing patchwork of state regulations.

Paul Hudson, an attorney with the nonprofit Aviation Consumer Action Project who appeared in court alongside a lawyer from the state attorney general’s office, said other states likely would pass similar laws.

“Other states will copy it with some slight variations — but nothing is going to be ridiculous,” he said after the hearing.

If enough states pass airline passenger rights laws, the federal government would probably create its own version, which would provide the uniform set of rules the airlines want, Hudson said.

In response to questions from U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Kahn, the Air Transport Association’s Span acknowledged that there are currently no federal rules governing services airlines provide during ground delays. He said the federal Transportation Department is considering establishing some.

After the hearing, Span said many airlines — including JetBlue, whose delays after grounding more than a thousand flights during a Valentine’s Day ice storm last year were the main impetus behind New York’s law — have established their own policies to provide better service to delayed passengers.

Charles Fuschillo Jr., a Long Island Republican who sponsored the legislation in the state Senate, said the law passed only after the airlines proved that they weren’t doing any better and were unresponsive to state lawmakers’ concerns.

“The airline industry said, ‘We can do this,’ but I made it very clear to them that they had failed to provide consumers with basic necessities,” Fuschillo said.

We found a cool site which has seating diagrams for every aircraft of most every airline. You will find the best seats, most comfortable, best legroom and and of course the seats to stay away from on your flight. All seats are color coded from the good to stay away. If being comfortable while on your flight is important give seatguru.com a look.