Get Your Photo on the Cover of a Lonely Planet Guide

Pikeo is yet another web 2.0 photo sharing site but this one s having a contest that will place the photos from four of their users on the cover of a new Lonely Planet Guide. The winners will also win a trip from Intrepid Travel. You can bet i will enter my photos from Istanbul, Barcelona, London and Paris.

Author of 100 Things to Do Before You Die, Doesn’t

Dave Freeman, the man behind the famous travel guide 100 Things to Do Before You Die, has died after hitting his head in a fall at his home. The 47-year-old writer passed away in his Venice home, said his father, Roy.

Airplane Crash in Madrid Kills 153

The budget airline Spanair has defended its decision to clear a passenger jet for take-off despite aborting an earlier attempt because of a technical problem.

One hundred and fifty-three people died in yesterday’s air crash at Madrid’s Barajas airport. Witnesses said the plane’s left-hand engine burst into flame as it lifted off the runway and the aircraft broke up and crashed back to earth in flames. Only 19 people survived the disaster.

FAA Software Glitch Delays Flights

The software program in Atlanta failed about 10 a.m. Pacific time. When that happened, a similar facility in Salt Lake City took over. But users continued to try to refile their flight plans, bogging down the system. At its worst, flight delays (mostly departures, but some arrivals) were as late as 90 minutes in some areas of the country. Hardest hit: Chicago (O’Hare and Midway), Baltimore/Washington International, Boston and Atlanta.

National Parks and “Sites” to be Featured on Quarters

On July 9, the US House of Representatives unanimously approved the America’s Beautiful National Parks Quarter Dollar Coin Act of 2008 (H.R. 6184). The proposed new commemorative coin series was inspired by, and unabashedly capitalizes on, the tremendous popularity of the 50 States Quarter® Program.

What about poor Delaware, which has no national park? Not to fear, folks. You see, the proposed legislation – a copy of which you can see at this site — doesn’t require a state to actually have a national park in order to qualify for an America’s Beautiful National Parks quarter dollar coin

Crete mayor has had enough of British drunks

The mayor of a Crete town has grown so exasperated with the rowdy, drunken behaviour of British tourists that he has demanded action from the British government.
“They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit,” said Konstantinos Lagoudakis, the mayor of Malia, in an interview. “It’s only the British people - not the Germans or the French.”

Chinese Airline Official Sentenced to Death

No, it is not because of flight delays but because they have been found guilty of embezzlement that China has sentenced an official of China Southern Airlines Group to death.

United Airlines to charge up to $9 for snacks

While capital punishment might be overkill it might occur to some passengers of United Airlines when they find out how much the airline will be charging for snacks.

Popularity: 66% [?]

When I was walking into the airport security in Las Vegas last weekend, this video that was playing caught my attention. It is both informative and entertaining as you learn how to pass through security in Las Vegas style. Blue Man group, magicians, clowns, celebrities and celebrity impersonators show you how it is done.

Popularity: 42% [?]

A while back I wrote an article analyzing the finances of online travel agency YTB. My conclusion was that it was better to be YTB than someone who is building a travel agency based on them. It all smelled a bit. Apparently I am not the only one who reached that conclusion as they were just sued by California’s Attorney General as a Ponzi scheme.

Brown Sues To Topple Online Pyramid Scheme

California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced a lawsuit against YourTravelBiz.com for operating a “gigantic pyramid scheme” that recruited tens of thousands of members with deceptive claims that members could earn huge sums of money through its online travel agencies.

Wireless culture taking to the air

Delta Air Lines announced Tuesday that it will introduce Wi-Fi access on certain aircraft by fall and expand it to its entire domestic fleet of more than 330 planes by next summer. American Airlines and Virgin America previously have said they will launch in-flight broadband Internet services on certain planes by year-end.

TSA to allow laptops to stay in approved bags

There’s a new option for people annoyed at having to take their laptops out of their bags at airport security. The Transportation Security Administration will now allow travelers to leave their computers inside “checkpoint friendly” cases.

Airline industry axes 60m seats

The global airline industry will fly 60m fewer seats in the run-up to Christmas - equivalent to a 7% cut in flights - as the oil spike and economic downturn force carriers to axe services.

Kayak and American Airlines are having a bit of a tif:

Kayak.com drops American Airlines airfares from listings

American Airlines telling you that it will no longer be displaying airfares on Kayak.com or sister site Sidestep.com.

American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner explained the company’s tiff with Kayak. The airline asked the meta-search engine to bar American ticket purchases through online travel agencies such as Orbitz.com or Cheaptickets.com. As of today, American’s airfares were not available on Kayak.com but flight schedules were still listed.

and in the expected follow up story:

Kayak.com drops American Airlines airfares from listings

American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner explained the company’s tiff with Kayak. The airline asked the meta-search engine to bar American ticket purchases through online travel agencies such as Orbitz.com or Cheaptickets.com. As of today, American’s airfares were not available on Kayak.com but flight schedules were still listed.

American Airline sues parent of Kayak.com and Sidestep.com

Fort Worth-based American Airlines is suing the parent of meta-search sites Kayak.com and Sidestep.com, saying the Web sites violated its agreement to use the airline’s airfare content.

At issue is whether the sites were allowed to display American fares through third-party sites, including orbtiz.com and cheaptickets.com — where the carrier must pay booking fees — rather than just on www.aa.com.

After Beheading, Greyhound Kills Ad Campaign

Yes, the company offering famously lousy service had just launched an ad campaign with the line “There’s a reason you’ve never heard of ‘bus rage’” when, on a trip from Alberta to Winnipeg, one of its passengers was apparently beheaded and eaten. Suffice to say, they’re doing away with the campaign

and in the strangest piece of news, the conspiracies around the murder that happened at the Olympics:

An American tourist is murdered, and conspiracy theories abound

What would make you stab a 62-year-old tourist to death in the middle of the day and then leap off a 150-foot tower? That’s a question you can’t help puzzling over if you’re in Beijing. What on earth was going on in the mind of Tang Yongming, the 47-year-old man who stabbed two Americans and their Chinese guide over the weekend? Todd Bachman, the father-in-law of the U.S. men’s volleyball coach, was killed in the attack.

Popularity: 59% [?]

Bag labelled ‘bomb’ got past security checks

A LARGE bag with “BOMB” written across it passed through Qantas check-in and security screening for oversized luggage at Brisbane domestic airport yesterday, the Transport Workers Union said.

Baggage handlers preparing to transfer the bag raised the alarm and stopped work for about 40 minutes as security staff and managers attempted to remove it.

With a weak dollar, America is a great buy for foreigners, yet visits are falling

A recent headline in The Guardian of London � “America � more hassle than it’s worth?” � underscores a stubborn global view that the United States is not an easy or a desirable place to visit.

Unesco Adds to Its World Heritage List

Unesco this month added 27 sites to its World Heritage list, which now has 878 sites in 145 countries. Nineteen new sites fall into the cultural category. They include the Historic Center of Camag�ey, an inland village in Cuba founded by the Spaniards in 1528; the Armenian Monastic Ensembles, three structures in northwest Iran that are dedicated to the Armenian Christian faith (the oldest dates from the seventh century); and the Wooden Churches of the Slovak part of the Carpathian Mountain area (Slovakia), which consists of eight structures built between the 16th and the 18th centuries for the Roman Catholic, the Protestant and the Greek Orthodox faiths. New natural sites include Surtsey, a volcanic island in Iceland formed between 1963 and 1967; the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico; and the Socotra Archipelago in Yemen in the northwest Indian Ocean near the Gulf of Aden.

Delta: Body of woman, 61, found in plane bathroom

Flight attendants discovered the body of a 61-year-old woman in the restroom of a plane shortly before the flight landed in Atlanta Wednesday morning, a spokeswoman for the airline said.

JetBlue CEO to take pay cut in ’show of solidarity’ with workers

JetBlue CEO Dave Barger will take a 50% pay cut for the second half of 2008, something Reuters calls “a show of solidarity with employees as the low-cost carrier struggles with soaring fuel prices and a slowing U.S. economy.”

Rape Alley

IT was once a peaceful fishing village, then an upmarket family resort � but today it is ruled by drunken young Brits.

Shameless pairs have sex in public, hooligans brawl over a wrong look, girls parade in underwear, youngsters down cheap booze until they vomit and drunken teens menace the narrow streets on quad bikes.

Welcome to Laganas on the Greek island of Zante, the latest holiday destination to fall foul of Brits abroad in the wake of now-notorious troublespots Ayia Napa and Faliraki.

Popularity: 49% [?]