Air Travel

Here are some ideas I’ve used for avoiding jet lag.

• Beware of long eastbound flights, especially overnight flights. They are the worst.

• If you can afford it, fly business class to be better rested.

• For eastbound transatlantic travel, I always check out the Queen Mary 2 to see if it fits our schedule. If you take an inside cabin, the fare is only a little more than economy air (and a lot less than business). You miss the jet lag and get seven nights’ accommodation, food and entertainment thrown in. 

A Saratov Airlines plane carrying 65 passengers and six crew crashed soon after takeoff from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport on Feb. 11, killing everyone on board. It was en route to the city of Orsk, just north of the Kazakhstan border. 

The plane was a Russian-made twin-engine Antonov An-180. Frozen-over speed sensors are suspected to have given incorrect readings, leading to the accident, with investigations ongoing as of press time. 

Worldwide, the crash was the first fatal accident on a large commercial airline in more than a year.

An Iran Aseman Airlines flight carrying 60 passengers and six crew crashed into the side of a mountain on Feb. 18, killing everyone on board. The twin-engine turbo-prop airplane was flying from Tehran, in northern Iran, to Yasuj, in the south.

Poor weather conditions and difficulty in reaching the crash site delayed recovery and investigation expeditions, which were ongoing at press time.

A subscriber suggested using Matrix.itasoftware.com simply to find out which airline partners fly to particular destinations (“Mileage-award-ticket Secrets,” Dec. ’17, pg. 11). After using that site to determine which airlines fly to Panama City, Panama, and San José, Costa Rica, I then also checked out the airfare comparisons on that site, and I found them to be quite inaccurate. It seemed to always point me to Delta Air Lines. For other airlines, it listed prices much higher than what I ultimately found. 

From the Editor — ITN subscriber J. Roger Nowell of Seattle, Washington, related an experience that his wife and daughter had when they tried to have their luggage interlined (that is, have their bags moved from one airplane to another without having to claim and recheck them) between two British Airways flights, one from Nice, France, to London, England, and the second from London to Seattle.

My friend Dan and I went to Iceland in August of both 2016 and 2017, flying Delta from Minneapolis, with connections in Albany, New York.

For our last night in Iceland, we went to Keflavík, the town next to the airport. We took the airport bus for a round trip (about $42) and then at the airport took a taxi to Hotel Grasteinn (Bolafótur 11; hotel grasteinn.is/en/location), a nice, new hotel on the north end of town.

In May 2017, my wife, Iris, and I started a 42-day trip to the South Pacific with an evening Air New Zealand flight from Los Angeles to New Zealand. 

Having traveled extensively in Spain over the years, in May 2017 we set our sights on an area new to us, the rugged region of Galicia, in the northwest corner of the country. 

Because I am a military retiree, we are able to catch hops on US military aircraft to many wonderful destinations, and getting to Spain from Charleston, South Carolina, was relatively easy. Our 8-hour flight from Charleston to a Navy base in Rota, about two hours by bus south of Seville, delivered us there in mid-morning. 

Just off base, we went straight to a local travel agency, Paco Travel, to arrange the beginning of our trip. We don’t like to plan ahead too much; serendipitous travel is our style. 

Flights from Seville to the major Galician cities do not run frequently, but we found a great one leaving the next morning. We traveled by bus to Seville and on to Seville’s airport the next morning. In just over an hour, a comfortable nonstop Vueling Airlines flight took us to A Coruña (aka La Coruña in Castilian Spanish), a thriving city near Spain’s northwest tip. 

While heading to India in October 2017, my travel buddy, Bob, and I had a stopover in Dubai, and we US citizens decided to try the visa-free trip to Kish Island in Iran. Details were scarce, so we went to Terminal 2 at Dubai International (DXB) and started asking questions.

While the office of Kish Airlines (en.kishairlines.ir) was not easy to find (ask around at desk 59 or 60 and someone will point out the door where you can begin the search), persistence paid off. A round trip cost AED735 (about $200), payable in cash, and we left on the next flight.