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| Vol. 5 | Issue 9 | February 27, 2007 |    |
With Concorde in mothballs, the next aircraft to get travelers across the Atlantic
fast may well be a rocketship.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which has been touting the prospect of “space tourism” in the form of short, expensive flights into space, is joining forces with none other than NASA to investigate the possibility of hypersonic rocketships that could carry passengers between New York and London. In a newly signed deal, the U.S. space agency will trade facilities and services with Branson’s company and explore further collaboration possibilities.
Virgin Galactic has exclusive rights to the spacecraft technologies of Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites, whose SpaceShipOne was the first private craft to reach outer space. SpaceShipTwo, currently under construction, is due to begin testing next year; a rocket — the “mother ship” — boosts it through the atmosphere.
In the partnership, NASA will share technology, expertise and research facilities with Virgin; Virgin will let NASA test equipment and train astronauts onboard SpaceShipTwo.
NASA and Virgin Galactic have expressed interest in mutual exploration of space suits, heat shields, rocket motors, and hypersonic vehicles (aircraft capable of traveling at least five times the speed of sound). Unlike the currently planned SpaceShip travel, which basically involved parabolic flight up and down again, hypersonic travel would be geared toward crossing longer distances — for example, covering the distance between New York and London in less than two hours, or about half the Concorde’s supersonic travel time.
Hypersonic travel will run into all the environmental and noise issues that
Concorde encountered and isn’t likely to happen soon. Still, the new
deal with NASA gives a lot more credence to Branson’s hopes of opening
space travel to, if not the entire traveling population, at least a larger
segment of it. 
China Southern Airlines has announced a flurry of enhancements to its service,
effective immediately — from free drinks to expanded meal selections
to baggage-handling guarantees. The airline has added the ability to select
seats and print out boarding passes within 12 hours of departure at its Web
site, www.cs-air.com/en. It
promises to deliver luggage within 15 minutes from aircraft to baggage claim
when planes are parked at
a gate, 30 minutes if parked out on the tarmac, and offers compensation if
luggage is misplaced for more than seven days even if ultimately found. Passengers
in first class will now get free cocktails in the air and be met individually
on arrival by a “Customer Expert” to help with any local connection
or transport needs.
You can ski green in Colorado without waiting for the snow to melt, thanks
to a new partnership between Bonneville Environmental Foundation and several
Destination Hotels & Resorts properties. BEF sells Mini-Green
Tags for $2 each, with the funds going to support wind and solar
power. Each tag sold, they say, creates a savings of 140 pounds of carbon dioxide
emissions. The Green Guest program rewards anyone who buys 10 of the mini-tags
with a 10 percent discount off lodging at five
participating Destination properties in Aspen, Telluride and Vail
(buy tags through the hotel; participating properties will also match your
donation). At the least expensive of the five, The Gant in Aspen, the rate
before discount starts at $185 a night for a one-bedroom condominium, and an
extra 10 percent discount is also available to anyone who arrives at The Gant
in a hybrid car. The Green Guest discount is available from March 1 until resorts
close for the ski season; use promotion code GREEN when reserving.
Mobile-phone plans have all sorts of names behind them, but a prestigious
one has entered the fray: National Geographic. The
National Geographic Talk Abroad Travel Phone works across international
borders, picking up best local signals. There are no contracts to sign, and
most international incoming calls are free. Your phone number stays the same
no matter where you travel. The phone can be purchased for $199, including
30 minutes of outgoing calls, or rented for $49 a week. For most countries,
the flat rate for outgoing calls is 90 cents a minute. The program is run by
Cellular Abroad, which provides the customer service and offers other phone
options of its own; the National Geographic phone will be available as of March.
ElleJet, a California-based aviation services company, is running a network
of charter, corporate, fractionally-owned and private jets whose empty legs
can be booked
online for sometimes
little more than the cost of a first-class airline ticket. Rather than returning
empty to their home bases, many aircraft operators sign up with ElleJet to
offer their space at rates much lower than typical charters cost. Last-minute
availability often means the best deals, which can work well for travelers
with urgent needs. For example, recently a traveler couldn’t get a same-day
ticket between San Diego and Grand Junction, Colo. (which would normally cost
$795 in first class and require a change in Salt Lake City). Chartering a flight
would have cost $10,000. ElleJet got him a quick flight on an empty Fokker
800 for $3,500 (and he could have brought along up to seven other people at
no extra charge). Right now, the price of an empty-leg flight includes all
seats on the plane; ElleJet plans to add a new service soon that will allow
different individuals to buy seats on the same flight (and thus cut fares).
Booking online requires email correspondence; for faster service or price information,
call 800 ELLEJET (800 355 3538). You can also sign up online for daily alerts
of empty-leg flights available out of your home area.
Before there was MapQuest, or Virtual Earth, or the Internet, there was the
AAA TripTik — that customized booklet of maps that told you how to “get
there from here” by car, including stops along the way. Rather than lose
customers to the impersonal Internet, AAA has now opened its TripTik
planner to everyone with Web access. The online mapping tool recommends
driving routes, indicates construction and traffic congestion, accesses AAA’s
400,000 “points of interests” — from sights to lodging and
restaurants — and even includes gas stations and fuel prices, updated
several times a day.
Courtyard by Marriott Miami Airport West Doral
3929 NW 79th Ave.
Miami, FL 33166
tel 305 477 8118, fax 305 599 9363
http://marriott.com/hotels/travel/miaca-courtyard-miami-airport-west-doral/
When you receive an email from a pal that says, “I have Super Bowl tickets, wanna go?” it’s not hard to come up with an answer. We decided to make a long weekend of it by playing several rounds of golf — at Inverrary (Jackie Gleason’s home course), at the beautiful Breakers in Palm Beach (see upcoming GTee review in the April issue of Global Traveler), and at Doral. The latter is every airline enthusiast’s favorite course, because it’s directly on the flight path to Miami International Airport (MIA) and you can see all sorts of different aircraft and airlines coming in to land.
The Super Bowl hotel situation was crazy; Orbitz, Travelocity and other sites were selling even one- and two-star hotels for $600 or more a night. But a week before the game, a room at the Courtyard opened up, for $209 a night.
Service at the Courtyard was good, not great. Although in-room advertising boasted free wireless Internet, that was only in the lobby; in the room it was free, but wired. Amenities in the room were so-so; I was grateful for the Maxwell House coffee, but there was only shampoo where there should have been conditioner too. Breakfast wasn’t included either, which I thought was unusual for this category of hotel.
Overall, the hotel looked pretty tired, but the GM assured me that a total renovation is scheduled; the 30-year-old property will be getting a complete facelift, beginning in May. And you can’t beat the location for fast egress to the airport — or for convenience to Doral Country Club, which is just minutes away.
Score: ••••• Francis
X. Gallgher
Fly American out of New York (JFK) to London (LHR) in first or business class
from now through May and you’ll earn a free coach ticket to use within
North America, including the Caribbean and Hawaii. You must first register,
using promotion code AAJFK, and can then earn one economy ticket for each of
up to three separate round-trips you make transatlantic in a premium class.
Qualifying flights must occur by May 31; bonus tickets can be used, with 14-day
advance reservation, until May 2008.
The Irish know how to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. A four-day festival
in Dublin, this year March 14-18, includes music, carnivals, theater, street
entertainment and more. To help you join in the nearby festivities, the five-star Merrion
Hotel in Dublin is offering a choice of two packages for the weekend
of March 16-18. For about $1,040 double occupancy there’s the Shamrock
Package, including two nights’ lodging, two grandstand tickets to the
parade, and a picnic lunch. The Festival Special is priced nightly, from $490.
Both deals include full Irish breakfast and welcome cocktails.
The Millennium Resort McCormick Ranch adjoins two top 18-hole golf courses
in Scottsdale, Ariz., and will custom-tailor
a golf package for you depending upon your budget and length of
stay. Through April, accommodations and a round of golf start at $199 a person
a day. Lodging options range from standard hotel rooms to two- and three-bedroom
villas.
Continental Airlines will award 2,000 bonus OnePass miles for every round-trip
flight between Newark (EWR) and any of four European cities from now until
April 30. Any flight to Berlin (TXL), Hamburg (HAM), Milan (MXP) or Zurich
(ZRH) that qualifies to earn normal OnePass miles also qualifies for the bonus.
You must register
in advance separately for each city-pair bonus offer.
Flights don’t start until May 6, but a limited number of special introductory
fares are on sale now for Iberia
Airlines’ new
nonstop service between Boston (BOS) and Madrid (MAD). The new flights will
operate five days a week (no Thursdays or Fridays). The introductory fares
start at $569 round-trip, not only to Madrid but also including connections
to other cities in Europe, and must be purchased by March 15 for travel between
May 6 and June 15. A Sunday-night stay is required.
