6 Essentials for Airline Travel – Part 1

Many of you fly to your timeshare vacations, and can perhaps use some ideas on how best to make airline travel as comfortable as possible. Use these tips that journalist Jason Notte, of The Street suggested for business travelers. If they work for people who feel like they live in airplanes, they might work as well for you, too.

In "6 Essentials for Airline Travel Survival," reprinted in part here by permission, Notte suggests "packing an entertainment and travel survival kit full of six items that security can't take and fees can't touch." Following is Part 1 of our 2-Part series.

{On top of rising ticket prices and extra fees} nearly 900 more flights a month are being canceled by carriers who don't want to risk fines of $27,500 per passenger for violating the three-hour rule (on the tarmac). For people with nowhere to go but an airplane that's not going anywhere, it could be a long wait in an unfriendly, expensive airport terminal.

Airlines are charging more for fewer amenities – all the more reason for passengers to bring their own.
  1. An e-reader
    With multifunctional smartphones, tablets, MP3 players and laptops at their disposal, why should an airline passenger take a seemingly one-dimensional e-reader (see photo) along for the ride? Three reasons: Size, price and battery power.

    At six to eight inches and five to 12 ounces, the average low-end e-reader is just slightly bulkier than a smartphone but much more svelte and portable than a tablet. The biggest travel-friendly features are batteries that measure their life in weeks instead of hours. The Nook can hold charge for more than 10 days, the Sony reader can hold out for two weeks and a Wi-Fi-only Kindle can keep the pages turning for three weeks to a month.

    Yes, the readers can hold 1,500 to 3,500 books, more than even the longest layover or delay requires, and pull up periodicals, and their built-in MP3 players, dictionaries and translators do a lot more for the literate flier than unburden him or her of a bagful of books.

  2. Noise-canceling Headphones
    Why buy a $10 pair of Maxell headphones or a $300 Bose or Beats Studio By Dr. Dre headset when a pair of earplugs will do the job?

    First off, they're not going to stick in your ears and irritate them. Secondly, they're awfully squishy and padded and a lot more comfortable than earbuds that can slip out of a big guy's ears pretty easily or sit uncomfortably in a smaller customer's canals.

    The best reason, however, is that you can sleep blissfully in a terminal - or listen to an airplane's radio channels while depriving them of 5 to 10 of your dollars.
Read "6 Essentials for Airline Travel Survival" by Jason Notte, in its entirety.

6 Essentials for Airline Travel – Part 2

(Photo credit - arstechnica.com)
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