Media Travel Tips

Hey, folks, aviation is interesting again—at least to the media. The October 16 issue of Fortune is typical. The Business Life section features "Secrets to Smarter Travel," including "300-day-a-year traveler who spills all his tricks," and "Road Warriors: The husband and wife edition," plus a comparison of business class seats and what to do during layovers in 15 exotic spots around the world. The implication is that if you but read all of this you will breeze through airline travel smiling like the people in airline ads. As the song says, tain’t necessarily so. Truth is, my airline travel has very little in common with these folks. That 300-day-a-year fellow seems to spend most of his time going to exciting places on a budget that makes me look like a hitchhiker. I tend to  visit truly exotic places such as—so help me, this is true—Herculaneum, Missouri and Yellvlle, Arkansas. Both are nice places, but getting there includes driving for awhile after you get off at the nearest airport. Business class seats? Wadda I care? Most of my flights don’t even have business class seats. If they did, I couldn’t afford them. That 300-day-a-year fellow states flatly that "Only amateurs check bags when they’re traveling for business." Sounds great, but I wish he’d tell me how to carry on a couple of suits plus—repeat, plus—a computer, handouts for a few hundred folks, a big box of books, and one CD for each book. This article, like so many, includes tips that don’t apply to my travel, or tips that I already know. So, why do the newspapers/magazines run so many of them? Because they sell newspapers/magazines. Evidently there are more people every year who believe—or desperately hope—that somewhere there really does exist the Holy Grail of airline travel. We'd love to post your comments. Please click the comment box at the top.