Author - The Durango Herald

Comfort hacks for flights in economy class

Air travel can be a humiliating, dehumanizing and even torturous experience – at least according to my email inbox. I hear often from readers such as Sue McDonough, who contacted ...

DATE: Nov 21, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

Hertz scrubs bills of derided cleaning charge

Hertz has quietly dropped one of the car rental industry’s most unpopular surcharges: the cleaning fee. “Although we appreciate when a vehicle is returned in clean condition, we d...

DATE: Nov 14, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

When mistakes happen, keep cool, be polite

All Ali Wallick wanted was the hotel room she had booked. Nothing more. She’d made the Atlanta Marriott Marquis reservation for a busy holiday weekend almost a year in advance. Bu...

DATE: Nov 7, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

Travelers lose affection for affinity cards

A recent poll bears out something I already believed to be true and am happy to see: Consumers are finally losing their enthusiasm for airline and other affinity credit cards. Ban...

DATE: Oct 31, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

If reservations vanish, what should you do?

No one knows exactly why part of Andrew Smith’s business-class airline reservation from Salt Lake City to San Juan, Puerto Rico, vanished. But when Smith clicked on American Airl...

DATE: Oct 24, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

How you can gauge sincerity of an apology

Jason Landman’s stateroom on the Carnival Miracle vibrated from the moment his ship cast off in Long Beach, California, until it docked seven days later. “It shook and rattled li...

DATE: Oct 17, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

Traveling down the rough road of broken trust

Do you trust your airline, car rental company or hotel? Does it trust you? It’s a question seldom asked. But when I checked into the Mountain Sky Guest Ranch near Emigrant, Montan...

DATE: Oct 10, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

Drivers beware: Don’t fall prey to gas-price scams

Rick Hudnett recently pulled into a Chevron station near his home in Orlando. He wishes he hadn’t. The $2.41 price per gallon was a few cents lower than average, so he assumed he ...

DATE: Oct 3, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

Is enough space on an airplane a human right?

Do you have the right to room on a plane? If you answered “no,” you’re probably with the majority of American travelers. After all, airlines are private companies, and you always ...

DATE: Sep 26, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

How to weather the wild climate in airline cabins

When Eric Crusius boarded his recent American Airlines flight from Washington to Dallas, the air conditioning was powered down and the cabin started to heat up quickly, just as you might exp...

DATE: Sep 19, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

Gadgets to put you at ease on road trips

Somewhere on one of my social media accounts, there’s an image of me being pulled over for speeding in Pooler, Georgia. My crime? Doing 67 mph on a stretch of Interstate 95 where ...

DATE: Sep 12, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter

Hotel upgrades can foil your lodging plans

As hotel renovations go, the one Robert Reich experienced was pretty extreme. The property he’d booked in Baltimore, the Mount Vernon Hotel, was being remodeled and reopening as ...

DATE: Sep 5, 2015 | CATEGORY: The Travel Troubleshooter