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The Transportation Safety Administration has introduce a great new mobile app to help travelers answer their common questions and concerns without chasing around a TSA rep at the airport!

To provide passengers with 24/7 access to the most commonly requested TSA information on their mobile device, TSA has developed the MyTSA mobile application. No matter where you are, you’ll have easy access to information you need to get through security and onto the plane safely and smoothly.

MyTSA puts the most frequently requested information about security procedures at airport checkpoints right at their fingertips. The application has multiple functions, including allowing travelers to find out if an item can be taken in checked or carry-on bags, view delays at all U.S. airports via a feed from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), get some of the most commonly asked packing and traveling tips, and post and see other passengers’ checkpoint wait times at specific airports.

TSA also has the ability to update the application to give users the most up to date information to help them prepare for security. If a specific item is not listed on the ‘Can I Bring?’ tool, users can submit it, through the app, directly to TSA for consideration to be added to the app.

Read the full article at TSA site

You can find the MyTSA iPhone app on iTunes.

For a limited time, South African Airways and American Express have teamed up to offer a fantastic 2 for 1 deal to South Africa. Pay with your American Express card and take advantage. THIS OFFER NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE.

Coming soon: Turn your smartphone into a hotel room key
Posted by: Sean O’Neill, Thursday, May 27, 2010, 1:08 PM

A new application will let travelers use their iPhones and other smartphones as room keys at Holiday Inns.
The Open Ways app makes it possible for guests to skip the front desk and go straight to their room, says a scoop by USA Today’s Hotel Check-In blog.
It’ll work like this: After you book a room, the hotel chain will zap an encrypted, unique audio code to your phone. You’ll get a text message, too, telling you what room you’ve been assigned to. Once at the door, click the app on your phone, and a signal will unlock your room’s door. A similar technology is already used as the key for rent-by-the-hour Zipcars.

The technology is still being tested in parts of Chicago and Houston and is not yet widely available.
Meanwhile, Apple recently filed for a patent for iTravel, a new app that will allow travelers to use paperless ticketing at airports, car rentals, and concerts.

One trick Apple would like to pull off is display on an iPhone’s screen a barcode-like graphic. Once you make reservations for your trip, airlines, hotels, and other companies can send you a code by e-mail or text message. You can have this code scanned by attendants at airport gates, concert turnstiles, or other shops. Already, Starbucks now lets you pay for your coffee via an iPhone app tied to the Starbucks debit card.

Apple’s other trick may be to add a “near-field communication chip” to each phone, which would make it easier and more common to use an iPhone as a hotel room key.
Do you like the idea of skipping the front desk by using your cell phone as a room key? Or does this new technology sound like it’ll create new problems?

Read the full article at Budget Travel

Whenever the government gets involved in micromanaging a business, there’s the risk of unintended consequences for the public.

That’s what I’m worried about with this new three-hour tarmac rule, which goes into effect Thursday.
The rule says that any plane sitting on the tarmac for three hours without giving passengers a chance to get off will face heavy fines.
That seems right. Nobody wants passengers stranded on planes with overflowing toilets, crying babies and a wait with no end in sight.
On the other hand, most airlines would never choose to let a plane sit for hours. So if it does, there’s usually some kind of problem, probably weather-related or traffic delays. Problems at airports are like dominoes — they cascade. Pretty soon the whole thing’s a mess.
Nightmare onboard
We all know that the airlines did this to themselves. Mesaba Airlines ruined it for all carriers when its ground crew in Rochester, Minn., refused a Continental Express jet’s plea to disembark passengers on a dark and gloomy night last August, forcing passengers and crew to sit overnight onboard. That was the last straw for the Department of Transportation, which laid down the new regulations in December.
If airlines and airports can’t behave with common sense, there has to be a law. The regulation is 81 pages long.
It’s too bad the law can’t be one sentence: Common sense should rule.
Now, it’s likely airlines will use the law as an excuse to cancel most bad-weather flights in advance to avoid possible penalties, which run $27,500 per passenger if the plane isn’t off the tarmac in three hours.
With fewer flights overall, more passengers will find they can’t rebook anytime soon.
I’m also afraid the airlines will cancel instead of delay any flight that goes back to the gate.
And who knows what will happen to checked luggage in the cargo hold if some passengers want to get off a flight and others do not?
Food, water, toilets
The rule does have loopholes that could still leave planes stranded in the next blizzard. There are exemptions for “safety or security or if air traffic control advises the pilot in command that returning to the terminal would disrupt airport operations,” DOT regulations say.
That’s kind of a large loophole.
About 900 flights last year sat on the tarmac for three hours or more, according to the DOT.
All my worries aside, the new regulations do have some great provisions in it for, um, provisions. It says airlines must provide adequate food and drinking water within two hours of a tarmac delay — plus keep bathrooms operable and have medical attention available.
In addition, starting on June 29 airlines will have to post flight delay information on their Web sites.
Let’s hope the three-hour tarmac delay regulation turns out to be one of those good, consumer-friendly government rules and not a dud.

Article from ABCnews