Air Travel

American Airlines has completely revised its economy-class fare structure, listing fees for many items that people used to assume would be included with an economy-class ticket.

In his “Departure Lounge” column, ITN’s publisher, the late Armond Noble, asked subscribers for recommendations of travel gadgets, that is, any devices or implements that help make traveling more convenient, safe or pleasurable. He printed a few responses in his October ’11 column, and after we repeated the info request in the August ’12 issue, several more e-mails and letters came in. Some of those responses appear below, with more to come.

For the independent portion of a 6-week September-October 2012 China trip, I used Ctrip to book six hotels and four internal flights.

Dear Globetrotter:

You can donate frequent-flyer miles to the Hero Miles program so that wounded, injured or ill military men and women who are undergoing treatment and need transport to a military or VA medical center, and their family members, can get free round-trip airfare.

The two longest flight routes in the world — nonstops on A340-500 planes from Newark, New Jersey, to Singapore (9,500 miles in 18 hours) and from Los Angeles to Singapore (8,000 miles but 18½ hours due to headwinds) — will cease being flown by Singapore Airlines in 2013, as they are unprofitable. The airline still will fly New York-Singapore via Frankfurt and Los Angeles-Singapore via Tokyo on A380s.

Dear Globetrotter:

Welcome to the 443rd issue of your monthly foreign-travel magazine.

I was appalled to read in the November ’12 “Boarding Pass” column, “… with the changes that many airlines have just made, bags will be checked through only to the last destination listed on each ticket. So, with itineraries using multiple, separately booked tickets, a passenger might not be able to automatically check his bags through to his final destination…”

A subscriber mentioned the pills No Jet Lag (Oct. ’12, pg. 54). I bought some in New Zealand, but they never worked for me.

by Larry Kritcher; Coconut Grove, FL

I have never spent as much time preplanning a trip as I did for our February ’12 trip to Southern Africa. To begin with, it’s so difficult to get there.