Planes, Trains & Automobiles

If you're looking for a relatively inexpensive way to take a youngster on his or her first plane ride here's an idea.

Effective 25 March, Horizon Air will operate two flights (Monday-Friday) each direction between Sacramento (SMF) and San Jose (SJC) that enable an easy same day trip starting in Sacramento. (Saturdays and Sundays only one flight operates each direction.)

Leave SMF at 10:05 a.m., arrive SJC at 10:50 a.m.
Leave SJC at 6:15 p.m., arrive SMF at 6:55 p.m.

A similar schedule is available in the reverse direction for those who live in the San Jose area. And naturally you could simply stay overnight if you have relatives or friends in the area.

Now you'll need to find things to do in San Jose with a child, but that might include the Great America amusement park (not too far from the airport), the Tech Museum downtown, or anywhere else you could get to in a rental car or with transit.

Horizon is currently selling seats on these flights for $29 one-way. The fares require at least 14 days advance purchase, and of course are non-refundable. Round-trip, the total price with all taxes and fees comes to $79.40 per person. As with anything airline fare related, this could all change in the blink of an eye so if you like this idea then it's best to act on it soon.

For adults who wish we had more airline options out of Chico, this will give you an opportunity to experience Horizon Air's service. (They still serve free beer and wine!) These are not the little Embraer 30 passenger jobs that United Express flies out of Chico but rather the Bombardier Q400, a 74 passenger turboprop and the workhorse of Horizon's fleet.

Horizon Air (part of the same company that owns Alaska Airlines) is the carrier that Chico would most like to land for service to LAX and elsewhere. Horizon flies the Q400 from Redding and Eureka to LAX and Seattle, and from Sacramento operates flights (Q400s and regional jets) to San Jose, Spokane, Boise, Santa Barbara, Portland and Palm Springs, but does not yet grace the tarmac in Chico.

When you take your child or grandchild for a first plane ride on Horizon be sure to tell the employees how much we would really like to see them land here in Chico soon. Who knows - maybe someday that first plane ride could start right here on Horizon.

In the wake of the bankruptcies of ATA (America Trans Air) and Aloha Airlines, an interesting thing happened. Clearly seeing an opportunity, Alaska Airlines, named for the coldest and furthest north part of the U.S., began or will begin service from several California cities to two Hawaiian destinations.

Since last fall Alaska has offered nonstops from Oakland (OAK) to Maui (OGG) and Kona (KOA) on a 3 times a week and 4 times a week frequency respectively.

Starting in early March the same frequency of service will be available from San Jose (SJC) to Maui and Kona.

Noteworthy for north state residents, effective 26 March, Alaska Airlines is offering daily nonstop service from Sacramento (SMF) to Maui. The schedule is convenient, outbound at 8:15 a.m. arriving 10:15 a.m., with the return flight leaving Maui at 11:50 a.m. arriving Sacramento at 8:00 p.m.

From its principal hub city, Seattle, Alaska Airlines flies to four Hawaiian destinations including Honolulu and Lihue (Kauai) in addition to Maui and Kona.

If you're heading to Hawaii be sure to compare package prices that combine air + car, air + hotel/condo, or air + car + hotel/condo before you buy a simple airline ticket. You may find the package price a better deal.

Keep in mind when comparing, however, that packages that include car rental normally do not include tax for the car, and tax on car rentals in Hawaii is high. Ask the tour operator that gives you a price quote what the additional tax amount would be that you will have to pay directly to the car rental company. That way you can make an apples-to-apples price comparison with booking the components separately.

I operate a hotel booking service for self-employed business travelers, those who work for small firms, and for people at large companies who are not required to use a designated corporate travel agency.

A question I always ask a new client is whether he or she belongs to AAA.

Why?

My experience is that AAA membership is by far the most common lodging discount for individual travelers. For the price of a basic annual AAA membership ($54 in northern California) an individual business traveler gets access to discounts at most hotels up and down the price ladder. This goes for both chain hotels (Marriott, Starwood, Hilton, Best Western, etc.) as well as independent properties.

To those of you who have read all of the chapters of Airline Fare School you have my thanks and congratulations.

I hope you get the chance to put some of the things you've learned into practice when you plan a future trip.

At the very least, try to be creative when you structure trips. Use the tinker toys approach, and avoid being a slave to the tyranny of "round-trips" when something else might work better.

I'll continue to write the occasional post about something interesting, unusual, or downright wacky when it comes to airline fares but this is the end of the structured approach of Airline Fare School.

To make it easier to get access to the series, here's a table of contents:

AIRLINE FARE SCHOOL

Introduction:  Welcome to Airline Fare School

Chapter 1:     The Basics, part 1
Chapter 2:     The Basics, part 2
Chapter 3:     The Basics, part 3
Chapter 4:     One ways and round trips
Chapter 5:     Connections, Stopovers, Through fares, Point-to-Point fares
Chapter 6:     Open jaws and Tinkertoys
Chapter 7:     Circle trips
Chapter 8:     Secret stopovers, Part 1
Chapter 9:     Secret stopovers, Part 2
Chapter 10:   Secret stopovers, Part 3
Chapter 11:   Differences between domestic and international fares
Chapter 12:   How you can research airline fares
Chapter 13:   Class dismissed!

In an online travel world that is heavy into blogging, emailing, Facebooking, and tweeting the latest bargain fare between Points A and B, there is little out there that gives knowledgeable consumers access to the raw data - the airline fare and rules displays that underlie it all. For those who have slogged through AFS and garnered a better understanding of how airline fares work, you certainly qualify as more knowledgeable, but where do you go from here to apply what you're learned?

There are two channels that I am aware of, which allow an ordinary consumer to see fare and rules displays. One is free, and the other has a modest monthly charge. (If you know of others please comment back with the link.)

The primary purpose of Airline Fare School is to acquaint you with the rules and structure of airline fares mostly as the system functions within the U.S. Nonetheless I've brought in references to international travel in the early chapter on understanding connections and stopovers, as well as more recently in the second and third installments of secret stopovers.

In this chapter I'll cover some things worth knowing about international fares even if you may never really put them to use.

At root the purpose of fares for international air travel is no different than for domestic travel; they serve to get the passenger from Point A to Point B. However certain features of fares - in particular higher priced full-fare economy, business and first class tickets - have different attributes that don't exist for U.S. domestic travel.

This is the last installment of Secret Stopovers .

US Airways - San Francisco to Paris (free stopover in Philadelphia)

US Airways allows a stopover in Philadelphia (PHL) or Charlotte (CLT) on pretty much any fare I've looked at between the U.S. and Europe. PHL is both a domestic hub for US Airways as well as its primary hub for service between the U.S. and Europe. Currently served European cities from PHL include Dublin, London, Madrid, Paris, Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam, plus Tel Aviv in the Middle East. From CLT the airline operates nonstop to London, Paris, and Frankfurt.

Fares to PHL tend to be on the high side so if a business trip (or leisure trip) comes up on short notice you might be able to add Europe on. You may actually save money over just buying a round-trip ticket to Philly, or at least be able to fly to Europe for not too much more.

In my style of German, that's Happy Fall of the Wall Day!

German allows you to make compound nouns of nearly limitless length that are simply dreadful (and typically bureaucratic), but also short ones like Zeitgeist (and unfortunately blitzkrieg) that are so perfect that other languages use them because they don't have their own words that work as well.

I spent a month in Germany in October 1980, including about a week in Berlin with a day trip to East Berlin. It was a remarkable place then with the separating wall adding this menacing and very odd dimension to the city. Other ways in which the city was - and was not - separated such as the subways and streetcar system, are too bizarre to explain here. In May 2008 I was back for the first time and the changes I saw were beyond conventional words such as "astounding" or "amazing".

EAST GERMANY'S ICONIC TRABANTS ARE NOW A JOYRIDE AT TRABI-SAFARI IN BERLN

Twenty years ago today something miraculous happened that few of my age then, let alone those of my parents' and older generations' ages, could imagine: the Berlin Wall and the entire 1400 km heavily fortified border that separated the two parts of Germany fell, and less than a year later German reunification would be real.

But the Berlin of today is a direct result of what happened on 9 November 1989.

(For an excellent account read this article in English from Spiegel-Online. Der Spiegel [The Mirror] is the weekly German newsmagazine akin to Newsweek or Time.)

My mother was German and I think what she always said about the wall was similar to what most other Germans felt. She thought it would eventually come down but not within her lifetime. Well, I'm happy to say that she outlived the wall by 18 years.

The process of healing the wounds of 44 years of postwar separation haven't been easy for Germany, especially for the former eastern part. But in spite of the at times wrenching change, few Germans would turn the clock back. Young adults born around the time of reunification have no personal memory of anything other than a unified Germany and a unified Europe. Good for them and good for all of the other young Europeans.

And when you look at the pictures from November 1989 all you see is complete joy (mixed with disbelief) that the detested wall had finally been broken.

In my small way as a German-American, I share in the pleasure of celebrating the 20th anniversary of the wall's demise and honor everyone who had a hand in bringing it down.

THE NEW BERLIN MAIN TRAIN STATION (Straddling the former east-west border)

We're going to go two directions here: Hawaii and the Caribbean.

But first let's consider why stopover provisions even exist in the first place.

At one time and even now, it's not always possible to fly between two places with nonstop flights or nice, neat connections. In order to use one airline from Point A to Point C via Point B. an overnight stop may be necessary. The airline knows that if its fare is broken point-to-point, it is likely to be more expensive than a competitor's. In such an instance the airline is trying to turn a negative into a positive, or at least into a neutral.

Yes, "beer" is not a verb but if it were ever to become one then Portland will be the place where it first occurs.

My partner Keith and I spent a 3-day weekend recently in Portland. A year ago I wrote a post about Portland but this trip was different. It was an actual visit to Portland and not simply an overnight turnaround point on a larger trip.

The trip had been planned for a couple of months, but structure was added to it after we read the post of our friend Rich Milliron. In the summer of '08, Rich took a train trip to Oregon for the express purpose of discovering why it's called "Beervana". He found out that the title is well-earned. Find out for yourself by reading his post - you'll enjoy it. (If you don't start reading his post with a beer in hand, you probably will by the end of it.)

MENU OVER THE BAR AT ROGUE DISTILLERY & PUBLIC HOUSE