Don and a Pay Toilet
Originally uploaded by Sapphireblue

Wondering where the airline fees are heading. Low cost airline Ryanair has not rules out pat toilets as a next step.

Ryanair: Pay toilets coming to a plane near you

This morning, chief executive Michael O’Leary of Irish carrier Ryanair, Europe’s largest budget airline said his airline might start charging passengers for using the toilet while flying. Was this a tongue-in-cheek comment?

“One thing we have looked at in the past and are looking at again is the possibility of maybe putting a coin slot on the toilet door so that people might actually have to spend a pound ($1.43) to spend a penny in future,” he told BBC television.

Airlines need to cut back on their expenses. I think we all get that. But the reasons that they give for some of the cost cutting measures can get a bit ridiculous.

Even for a die hard Chicago Bears’s fan watching a Chicago Bear’s game is probably not worth $28,000, but that’s how much it cost on a cruise ship wireless bill.

Cruiser disputes $28,000 bill for wireless session on ship

Be careful when using your cell phone or wireless card on a cruise ship - even if the ship is docked in a U.S. port.

That’s the lesson today from a story in the Chicago Sun-Times about a cruiser hit with a $27,789 bill for a single wireless session while on a vessel docked in Miami.

Wayne Burdick of Schaumburg, Ill., tells the news outlet he used his AT&T wireless service from a ship in November to watch a Chicago Bears football game for more than two hours (using his AT&T wireless card with his laptop to call up an Internet feed of his home cable signal).

Don’t bother calling with your travel complaints

United Airlines is putting the kibosh on calling in with complaints.

Last week the airline confirmed that, come April, it will disconnect the phone line to a foreign call center contracted to field customer compliments and complaints. Customers with issues to discuss will still be able to call the airline’s general 800-number but, as anyone who’s tried navigating United’s (or any airline’s) automated phone tree knows, the focus there is on selling tickets and tweaking reservations.

United Airlines spokesperson Robin Urbanski says the company did research on the success of the feedback line and concluded that “people who e-mail or write us are more satisfied with our responses.”

I noticed on my recent trip to Mexico that public displays of affection seem quite common. A town mayor tried to put a stop to it and got started a huge fuss and a number of kiss-ins instead.

Kissing ban gets Mexico hot under the collar

The affair blew up in January, when Guanajuato’s City Council, led by the socially conservative National Action Party, or PAN, approved an ordinance on public behavior to replace a 32-year-old law. The ordinance tackled problems such as unlicensed street vendors and jaywalking. But it also targeted offensive language and “obscene touching.”

The mayor, Eduardo Romero Hicks, was asked what sort of public act would be punishable. He said the law would ban agarrones de olimpiada, which translates roughly as “Olympic fondling.” (In an interview later, he explained that this meant “fondling far beyond the norm . . . extreme eroticism in public places.”)

The outcry was swift. Protesters gathered in front of City Hall to kiss en masse. The news media got into the act, and pretty soon Romero and his city were at the center of an unflattering national controversy. A satirical video posted on YouTube played a familiar cumbiacumbia-style tune with reworked lyrics and depicted Romero in a priest’s collar. One editorial cartoon showed a couple kissing in a bird cage suspended by a fixture shaped to spell “PAN.”

UK law apparently allows the government to bar travel to people inciting hatred. The government used that law to ban a U.S. pastor from entering the country because of his intent to picket a play.

Anti-gay American cleric banned from UK for inciting hatred

A homophobic American cleric who runs a website called God Hates Fags and was allegedly planning to picket a play showing in the UK has been banned from Britain by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith.

Fred Phelps had vowed to come to Britain with his daughter, Shirley, to picket a school play in Basingstoke, Hampshire, that promotes tolerance for gay people. The play, The Laramie Project, depicts the murder of a homosexual teenager, Matthew Shepard, in the Wyoming town in 1998. It will be staged tomorrow evening at Queen Mary’s College.

Other articles that caught my eye:

• How to become a freelance travel writer?
• Budget Travel: Renting a vacation apartment
• IPod Applications For Travellers!
• Taking Your First Cruise Vacation? Here are Some Handy Tips for You

If travel makes you nervous already then you probably should not read the following story.

TSA tests scanners to measure anxiety

Newspaper accounts are using words like �Orwellian� and �the stuff of science-fiction nightmare� to describe a new kind of technology being tested by the Homeland Security Department and Transportation Security Administration. The technology would use an array of scanners at security checkpoints that could detect all kinds of readings from individual who pass through them � measuring their heart rate, body temperature and breathing speed to look for unusually high levels of anxiety. Anyone who displays such symptoms presumably would be pulled out of line for additional scrutiny and questioning.

I could relate to this story since my last trip would best be categorized as religious voluntourism.

Religion to help nation’s tourism industry

The travel industry is always searching for new markets and new products. Ecotourism took off in the 1990s. More recently, “voluntourism,” which combines vacation travel with volunteer work at the destination, has become popular. Currently, one of the fastest growing segments of the industry is religious tourism, which includes pilgrimages, short-term missionary work, monastic retreats, faith-based camps, and visiting sites of religious significance. TJ contributor Steven Crook investigates Taiwan’s potential to become a destination for international religious tourists.

This story says that brits hate Ryanair… it does not say they don’t fly on it.

Ryanair voted least favourite airline for third year running

British travellers have voted Ryanair their least favourite airline for the third year in a row in a TripAdvisor poll.

Of the 450 Brits questioned, 30% voted the low-cost airline as their least favourite.

Ryanair is not content to be hated just by the residence of Great Britain.

Ryanair boss sets sights on no-frills transatlantic flights with new airline

Passengers could be taking budget flights between the US and Europe on a Ryanair-backed airline in less than three years, the low-cost carrier’s chief executive claimed yesterday.

Friends don’t let friends fly drunk… or stupid.

‘Drunk’ man aboard Turkish Airlines flight claimed to have bomb

A drunken man claiming to have a bomb tried to hijack a Russian-bound Turkish Airlines plane on Wednesday but was quickly overpowered by fellow passengers, officials said.

Please keep your voices down when the pilot turns on the no talking sign.

Passenger to pay for airline noise

Flight passengers are likely to be charged for the noises airplanes make. The government is pushing for a bill containing such plans to secure resources to build soundproof facilities for residents near the airport area who are suffering noise pollution, but critics say the government is offloading its responsibility on passengers, who are already paying the fuel surcharge for soaring oil prices.