Columns

“You can leave earlier if you travel standby on Delta,” the reservation agent told my cousin, Marcus, when he called Northwest Airlines about his JFK-to-Seattle flight.

“Fantastic! What a terrific service,” he commented.

He wasn’t quite so happy a few days later when he checked his seat assignment for the return trip to JFK online and found that his booking had vanished into thin air.

When he called the airline for clarification, he was informed that the original booking from JFK had been canceled as a “no show” and, as a result, the return had been wiped out.

I...

by Chris Springer, Contributing Editor

“Himalaya” by Michael Palin (2004, Thomas Dunne Books. ISBN 0312341628 — 288 pp., $29.95 hardcover).

It’s been called the “Palin effect.” Whenever a Michael Palin travel series airs on the BBC, British tour operators are deluged with inquiries about the featured destinations.

Previously, the comic actor traveled around the world in 80 days, retraced Ernest Hemingway’s footsteps and crossed the Sahara. In this coffee-table companion to his latest TV series, he treks to the world’s rooftop, the Himalayas.

It’s not hard to...

One of the most mysterious and arcane topics among airplane travelers is jet lag and its incapacitating effects on the traveler. Having firsthand experience from traveling frequently over a 6-year period from New York to numerous destinations in Asia, I have found that jet lag is a debilitating experience that, fortunately, can be dealt with.

I can vividly remember flying 14 hours nonstop from JFK to Tokyo, having a 4-hour layover and catching a 5½-hour nonstop flight to Manila, Philippines. That common air travel route took me across the International Date Line and 12 time zones....