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August 16, 2015: Once again, we charge for everything but being late, America’s least favorite air carrier, Spirit Airlines, has the distinction of being at the top of the list (or bottom depending on your reference point) as the country’s least on time passenger carrier—less than 50% of all their flights arrive anywhere they serve on time!! This accomplishment from Spirit was for the month of June— and was the worst overall rating for any U.S. Air carrier in nearly 40 years. Even on their worst days, Southwest and Fudrucker Air do a better job. Now some of you must remember legendary Fudrucker?

August 7, 2015: Pack yourself or another adult (leave the kids at home if you own any) — and head off to fun and challenging camp vacation.

At the Skipper Academy (skipperacademy.com) for about a $1000 a day enjoy sailing lessons and fun in either Croatia or the British Virgin Islands. The lessons not only include sailing but crew management and social skills — along with docking your craft to pick up supplies.

August 5, 2015: Finally seeing their way to join the publicity out cry and bandwagon, the 3 major US carriers have finally banned transport of dead African wildlife on their planes — by the way, most foreign carriers did this years ago!

Lead by Delta, United and American, these carriers will no longer transport “shot for fun and trophy” wildlife — including lions, leopard, rhino, buffalo, elephant — this won’t stop wildlife hunters from hunting but maybe slow them down some?

August 3, 2015: Yes — with all those add on fees (like checked luggage, seat assignments, printing a boarding pass, etc.) — with the 10 top carriers bringing in over $38 Billion in add on fees!

Here’s the top 10 fee culprits:

July 30, 2015: Check out what is now the “worlds largest swimming pool” on the west coast of Chile.

The filtered salt water pool is nearly 6/10th of a mile long and holds over 66 million galloons of water — thats enough water to fill over 600 backyard pools.

July 29, 2015: Never to be at a loss for words or descriptives, US Vice President Joe Biden has described New York’s La Guardia as “third world”! Well he certainly got that right!

LGA, also honored as one of the worst airports in America, is a mish-mash of terminals, confusing entry and exit for both passengers and ground traffic, and operational nightmare with its extremely short over water and neighborhood runways.

July 27, 2015: Well by the looks of this picture from one of their busiest hubs for customer service at around 7:45 am last weekend at their busy DFW hub you wouldn’t think they were even open?

And in view of their second quarter revenue and earnings release over this past weekend — reporting a very profitable quarter profit of $1.7 billion one would think they might “staff up some”?

July 16, 2015: According to the American Association of Retired People (AARP) the best time to book a domestic flight is 47 days before take off… this is based on information from CheapAir.com which analyzed 5 million potential fares. And the best day to book is Tuesday before 3 pm Eastern Standard Time.

For the best deal to Europe they say book 276 days before planned departure – really? The Travel Curmudgeon disagrees – experience says that the more in advance one books the higher the fare – makes sense, planning that far in advance airlines can charge what ever they can get!
The TC’s advice – be vigilant and check fares often – a typical airfare changes more than 70 times – have a price in mind (based on your own research) and book when that price gets close. AARP needs to be more vigilant in their own research!!!