Consumer affairs

by Robert McGarvey

One early morning in July I was drinking coffee in the kitchen of a rental apartment in Lavapies, Madrid when an email came in from a friend who dates back to high school. “Why aren’t you in Barcelona,” he wanted to know.

I did not hesitate with my answer. I happen to like Madrid very much but just as important is that Barcelona in summer is stuffed with tourists, locals howl about overtourism, and the place just didn’t seem welcoming.

The next morning another email from my friend arrived saying, in effect, you’re right.

That’s because the day before an anti tourist protest had erupted in Barcelona where protesters fired water pistols at tourists.

There was none of that in Madrid although there were July protests against tourism in the Canary Islands and Valencia as well as Barcelona.

Spain is not unique. There have been loud grumbles about overtourism in Amsterdam, Greece (Athens and Santorini), Amsterdam, Bali and even places like Dubrovnik and Bruges.

I cannot say I have never been to an overtouristed destination. I was in Santorini in 1999 and swore I’d never return because the streets were thick with too many cruise passengers. Matters have only worsened but I’ve never returned so don’t blame it on me.

I went to Dublin for the first time in mid June 1989 and talked with more Americans than Irish. In this case I resolved never to return in the peak summer months and have often been to the 32 counties in late fall and early winter when few Americans – few tourists of any kind – are about. I have been the only guest in a hotel on the Antrim coast and one of a handful in hotels in Letterkenny and Donegal. Nobody complained about overtourism to me on those trips.

Of course I have been to Rome but my time to go is the first week or two of December when there are no tourists – and no wait times at museums or in Vatican City.

I have been to Berlin in that same early December slot and the Christmas markets are open but just about everybody you’ll talk with is a local (although in Berlin that often means a foreigner).

Note: A massive benefit of traveling in non peak times is that everything is cheaper – airfare, hotels, and and sometimes even restaurants.

But the other plus is that you won’t hear kvetching about tourists and you won’t be fired at with water pistols. Locals are happy you’re there because you are ringing the cash register.

Isn’t July a peak month for Spain’s tourism? It is but I did not see floods of tourists in Madrid except on the Gran Via, at the Prado and Reina Sofia museums and in the glitzy Salamanca neighborhood. And many of the tourists I encountered in Madrid were from other parts of Spain. Of course I spent many hours in the museum district but most of my time was spent in Lavapies, La Latina, El Rastro and Embajadores, a few miles removed from the Gran Via and – at least in the case of Lavapies – the population is a multicultural stew and who could tell if I’m a tourist or a local?

Lavapies has its issues around its future. There were bed sheets hanging from a building a block from where I stayed that protested the eviction of a family from an apartment up the street – Lavapies is well into a gentrification that is transforming a neighborhood that had once been impoverished – but the evictions seem to more blamed on the gentrification than on tourism per se and that’s the proper call.

The solution isn’t to ban Airbnb et. al. and grumble about tourists but to enact tenant protections and barriers to evictions.

Personally, while in Lavapies I ate in many local restaurants, drank in local bars, shopped in local markets and did not sense significant hostility.

Sure, some local bars are unwelcoming but I encountered more overt hostility in bars in South Boston a half century ago where in many cases the bartender simply would not serve an outsider. Nobody refused to serve me in Lavapies.

Bottomline: Overtourism is a real issue. Don’t contribute to it by going to destinations and places where there are overflows of tourists. Go if you want to but go in non peak times and to neighborhoods that aren’t bursting with tourists. And wherever you go, stay curious and respectful.

Oh: it helps to spend a long while in one place. I spent a month in Lavapies and, about halfway in, folks began recognizing me, some even started saying “hola.”

But a point I mull: erase tourism from the Canary Islands or Santorini for that matter or many of the places that complain the loudest and then what? 35% of the Canary Islands GDP derives from tourism. Overtourism can be ugly but so can poverty.

by Robert McGarvey

How many apps do you have on your phone? I have no idea how many are on mine but I’ll tell you I only needed two to navigate around Madrid and Spain in the month of July.

I will use a third – AllTrails – the next time I walk the Camino de Santiago and especially useful is that AllTrails allows the user to download the trails and that’s good when occasionally there’s no cellular signal.

But in more urbanized Spain the only two I used were Rome2rio and Google Maps. Both are free. But I use them not because of the price but because they work.

I stumbled upon Rome2rio in 2021 when I was walking a Camino from Leon and wanted to get from Madrid’s airport to Leon and. bingo, Rome2rio showed me the Metro route to the Chamartin train station. Earlier it had shown me the two options for travel from Madrid to Leon – high speed train (under two hours) or bus (nearer four hours but half the price). I opted for train and Rome2rio showed me multiple departures and fares. A few clicks and. shazam, it was all arranged.

Similarly, this year, when I wanted to arrange trips to Toledo, Avila, Segovia and Seville, trains won my patronage and booking travel was quick and simple with Rome2rio

For next year I am planning a possible stay in Marseille where I want to fly from Phoenix to Paris. train from Paris to Marseilles, and possibly train from Marseille to Madrid. Rome2rio sorts it out literally in seconds. The train from Paris to Marseille, incidentally, is a little more than a three hour journey and costs around $120.

The key that lets me know all this: Rome2rio, founded by a couple of former Microsoft engineers, uses Google Cloud and Google Maps to sort its data which is plentiful. Per Google, “Rome2rio collates transport and fare information from more than 5,000 companies, including airlines and hotels, as well as train, bus, ferry, taxi, and rideshare operators. Developers add the transit data as a map layer on top of Google Maps Platform to improve search relevance. Using Rome2rio’s search engine, travelers can query more than two million travel destinations and make informed decisions based on travel time and pricing.”

Rome2rio now is owned by Omio, a travel booking engine. I used Omio to buy tickets for the four train trips I took this summer and have no complaints. Note: you’re not forced to use Omio, it’s just that inside Rome2rio it is simpler to. I could have booked trains directly with Renfe…but why incur the extra steps? Besides I’ve always thought it appropriate to pay for one’s lunch and using Omio pays for what I’m getting from Rome2rio.

As for Google Maps, it’s probably on just about every smartphone in the US and most of us use it regularly to drive to destinations we are unfamiliar with. I still remember – with a shudder – fumbling with paper maps as I sped down a highway. I also remember getting lost when I misread a map. For me, driving now includes Google Maps. Period.

In Madrid I learned to use it – and depend on it – as I walked 225 miles in the city and went to restaurants and small museums and mercados that I’d never been to. When walking, click that tab in Google Maps and you can also click a Steps tab that gives turn by turn directions.

It’s easy to get lost walking in a strange city – there are sights and sounds that grab our attention and, 10 minutes later, we realize we’re no longer heading where we want to. Google maps with Steps activated is the cure.

Google Maps also is very good for taking public transit. It shows the next arrival time, how many stops, expected travel time – all the info you want when choosing the best transportation option. I used it in Madrid for the Metro and found it reliable (and it also informed me I had two metro stops very near where I was staying, not just the one I knew about).

The terrific thing is that both Rome2rio and Google Maps are free. AllTrails+ is $2.99/month fee but if you hike at all, it’s money you need to spend. I use it in national parks in the US and it’s a wonder.

Three apps for smarter, often cheaper travel. That’s traveling light but cleverly.

by Robert McGarvey

By Robert McGarvey

Ever since it debuted I have been an Airbnb skeptic. Indeed the very idea of paying money to sleep on a stranger’s couch – when I wouldn’t sleep on a friend’s couch for free – seemed, well, absurd.

I wasn’t more enthusiastic about paying money to use a spare bedroom of a stranger.

And then a funny thing happened on my way to Madrid this summer. We’d decided to flee Phoenix’s heat this year and spend the month of July in a cooler clime and of course I know Madrid is hot but the fact is yesterday it was 90 in Madrid but it was 117 in Phoenix. The Phoenix low was 93. The low.

So Madrid – a city we like for its great museums, good foods, lively street scenes – is where we chose to flee in escaping Phoenix heat.

At what cost? At $200 per night – a modest hotel room in a European capital – the tab for July would be $6000 plus taxes.

I glanced at Airbnb, mainly out of frustration with the hotel prices I found, and pretty much instantly came upon a listing for a whole apartment in Lavapies, an edgy multi ethnic centro neighborhood about a mile from the Prado. This particular listing was for a place a couple blocks from a 24/7 Carrefour supermarket and a metro stop.

How much? Under $1900. For the month.

Sold.

The unit is in a very old building but is totally renovated and looks to be an IKEA model apartment. Around 400 square feet, including a sleeping loft with a king size bed and a real staircase, not a ladder. There’s a tiny but fully equipped kitchen, a similar bathroom, an ac, and surprisingly fast WiFi (about 270 mbps just now).

Of course I knew that Barcelona had banned short term rentals, to take effect in 2028, but to me Barcelona is an utterly different and glitzier place than Madrid, which has all that a European capital should have but with little self importance.

But I now know that the Spanish government is making noises that it plans to do something about Airbnb and its brethren but that may be sheer noise. What is true however is that rents are jumping skyward in Barcelona, Madrid, and other tourist destinations. The locals are complaining.

And then I saw the large graffiti across the street from the Airbnb I’m housed in: Fu** Airbnb – resiste Lavapies.

Know that Lavapies sometimes has been called “the coolest neighborhood in the world.” I don’t know about that but walk through it and you will walk along blocks thick with North African retail and culture, other blocks that are straight out of India, some that are old Madrid, others that are sub Saharan Africa, and then there are the blocks of upscale hipsters.

If I had to name a neighborhood in the United States that reminds me of Lavapies I’d say Venice beach a quarter century ago – I moved from it in 1999 just as its gentrification took off — or maybe Adams Morgan in Washington DC where I lived in 1974-75. But neither was anywhere near as multi racial and multi cultural as Lavapies.

Lavapies definitely has a cool vibe. And now I wonder if I am undermining it by spending a month in an Airbnb.

And then I remember Venice Beach which was definitely hip when I moved in in 1986 but it had lost much of its cool when I loaded up a U-Haul in 1999 and relocated to Sonoma county where I stayed a couple years. I liked the Venice I lived in but then it was gone.

There was no airbnb to blame then. But more wealthy homeowners were renovating beach shacks into palaces and late model BMWS and MERCEDES were replacing the battered VWs and Datsuns and even a few orphan vehicles such as Morris Minors on the local roads. Money was changing the place and the attraction was a great location on the Pacific. What had once seemed improbable suddenly had become inevitable.

So it now is happening in Lavapies. A great cheap location has been primed for gentrification and it will happen with or without Airbnb. Money talks louder than graffiti.

By Robert McGarvey

Consider this blog a continuation of last week’s blog on Booking.com numbers about where we find our travel inspiration and information.

This week, the news in a press release issued by Accor caused me to sit up straight in my chair: We read reviews of hotels by guests, just about all of us do, says Accor research.  

“A staggering 97% of hotel guests have consulted guest reviews when looking to book a stay in a hotel or resort, according to a new report from Accor, a world leading hospitality group.”

We read them in bunches, apparently: “On average, guests read nine reviews (8.63) for each hotel or resort they’re looking to stay at.”

The results go on: “After staying at a hotel or resort, nearly six out of ten people (57%) say they write reviews themselves for at least half of their stays.”

That is: not only do we read ‘em, we write ‘em.

Then I began sorting through my most recent hotel stays: a couple nights in Dallas, nights in Gretna VA, Fountain Hills AZ, Manhattan, San Francisco…and, you know what, not only did I write no reviews for the online sites (I may have written a column or two. But no reviews as such), I also read exactly none.

Yes, I long was something of a fan of TripAdvisor in particular and I know the company has an expensive arsenal of weapons created to hunt down and destroy fake reviews, machine written reviews and the like. I salute the company’s tenacity. But this is a losing battle, a reality I accepted about a year ago when I saw a Guardian piece entitled “Fake reviews: can we trust what we read online as use of AI explodes?”

The verdict then was no. The verdict today is why are you even asking?

Today’s powerful AI tools mean fake reviews can be spit out in a second and even if Tripadvisor’s tech snares many, some likely will get through.  

And there also are human content mills – often in India – that generate fake reviews by the ton.  

There’s a flood of the stuff and, frankly, I can’t bet on the review sites winning this battle.

Today there’s even a website, Fake Review Watch.  Check it out, it’s an informative destination and even a cursory glance will tell you the problem of faked reviews is monumental.

There’s another glaring reality too: even when the reviews are real – that is, probably written by a human being who actually stayed in the hotel – I honestly don’t care about these opinions and see no value in reading them.

A month ago I stayed three nights in a Hampton Inn in Gretna, Va.  It was adequate for its modest price that even included a decent, free hot breakfast and drinkable coffee by the gallon.

What did other guests say?  

The first review I read included this: “The Italian Restaurant across the street is worth the trip.” Uh, I ate there and, no, it’s not unless one’s standard is Chef Boyardee.  After a long day or flying and driving it was an acceptable meal. But it isn’t “worth the trip.”

Then there was this posted in April 2024: “Old and tired hotel which gave the appearance of not being the cleanest, bed on the softer side, couldn’t reach the shower head to make an adjustment. The breakfast was ill prepared with rubbery eggs and not enough of other things to make up for it.”

And this was posted in May: “Excellent service. Breakfast was great with lots of choices. One of the better hotel breakfasts. Rooms were spacious. We got free drink at checkin and checkout. Very good experience here.”

Rashomon. 

If I had checked the review site before booking at the Hampton I would have given up about there.

Opinions are as plentiful as weeds and less useful.

How do I pick hotels where I’ll stay?

Well, in Gretna, the Hampton Inn was the only convenient choice and we needed to be at this location for a family trip.

For a recent stay in Fountain Hills AZ the hotel I stayed in was the site of the meeting I was attending so, naturally, I stayed there.  

On recent walks along the Camino de Santiago in Spain I usually booked hotels in small towns with limited lodging choices and what was available was where I stayed.  

Often, where I stay isn’t a matter of much real choice. Of course I don’t read any reviews for those trips.

In other cases, where there are choices, I’ll ask friends and acquaintances for recommendations and they are a well traveled lot and their opinions are sensible.  I’ll bet you do likewise because we trust the opinions of friends.

I know I trust friends a lot more than reviews written by computers, at content mills, or by real people I don’t know. That’s why I don’t and won’t read them.

But I do wonder who responded to the Accor poll. Was it an army of AI bots?

By Robert McGarvey

Booking.com wants to know and it has developed research that aims to identify where you and I come up with our ideas about our future travels.

There’s also the question: have new information modalities rewritten the results? Is TikTok the beginning and end of travel inspiration?

Speaking for myself. I can say I have never looked at TikTok for anything.  I’m not dissing it, just yawning at its mention. I know others think differently, so be it.

So what do the Booking.com numbers have to tell us?

The show stopping chart result is that in the lead is what has always been in the lead.  That’s because 45% of us say we get travel ideas from friends/family.

Of course we do, we always have and that “we” is the broad word meaning people, all of us. A friend comes back from walking the Camino de Santiago and talks your ears off about that pilgrimage and soon you are planning your own walk across Spain because that is how inspiration works.  We take it from trusted sources and the key word is trusted.

Of course not everybody we know is a reliable source.  But we know who among our relatives and exaggerates, who lies, who always is in full bore Panglossian mode.  

we also know, because we know the people, whose tastes are utterly dissimilar from our own.

We also know who we’ve listened to in the past and it’s been worthwhile.

But we also pay attention to other sources.

For instance: What’s in second place with 39% of us tabbing it: social media.  Personally, tho, I see this as a subset of friends and family.  Those are the people whose posts I glance at and might believe.  There is no way I am reading and certainly I’m not believing some stray influencer’s insistence that I really ought to vacation in Albania because it’s like Greece but cheaper (and, yeah, there are such posts).  Now there is a good reason to be interested  in Albania – it was the planet’s most isolated and poorest nation for many decades after WW II.  In this century it has taken steps to join the rest of us and that’s probably an intriguing course to witness. And the location, above Greece and across from southern Italy, is spectacular.

But what I see in social media that’s posted by paid influencers is dross. I skip it. But I do look at travel posts by friends and family and they look at mine.

Quite probably the top two on the Booking list surprise no one.

Where the Booking.com numbers get genuinely interesting are at the bottom of the list.  Travel agents and tour operators come in at third from the bottom with 17% of us giving a hoot about what they say.  That means roughly five of six us don’t listen to them. Sure, I see the headlines in travel trade publications that tout the resurgence in use of travel agents. But the Booking numbers throw shade on that thesis.

And then the results really sting. 

That’s because in next to last place – with 14% paying attention – are newspaper and magazine articles.  86% don’t look at such stories and if they do they don’t heed the suggestions. Ouch.  That number makes me glad that although I have written thousands of magazine and newspaper articles I’d guess that under 5% dealt with travel destinations.  Sure, I did write some but mainly I wrote about business and tech and credit unions and real things, not where you should go on vacation this summer because, honestly, I have no idea what you should do.

In that vein, by the way, I’ll tell you I am going to Spain which has emerged as my go to place to get out of the US.  But I won’t tell you much more about it because apparently you don’t care what I have to say.

Speaking of which is that last place – with just 10% of us saying they get good travel advice from this source- are podcasts.  Whew.  I do a podcast – the CU 2.0 Podcast – but it is not about travel, but credit unions.  There are maybe 400 shows in the library and I don’t believe I have ever offered travel commentary.

Which is good because you wouldn’t pay any attention.

by Robert McGarvey

Probably the biggest change I have experienced in my personal travel planning since the arrival of the World Wide web some 30 years ago is today’s rollout of generative AI tools, especially by Google and Chat GPT. 

That means bigger than iPhone, bigger than the many hundreds of travel apps, bigger than the admittedly sometimes useful airline apps. AI is huge and getting bigger.

Don’t they misfire? Sure, we all saw Google’s recent ai “hallucinations” – notoriously, to one user’s question about how to keep cheese from sliding off pizza, Google suggested a dollop of glue but do note it suggested non toxic glue (Elmer’s) and probably it would actually work and wouldn’t really harm the taste of many homemade pies.

But as Google rejiggers its search screens -putting emphasis on AI driven “overviews” – it has gotten sensitive about the mockery its overviews sometimes have triggered and accordingly it’s issued a white paper.  

Interestingly, Google says that many of its slip ups happened when questions that involve “data voids” were asked. That’s a question like how many rocks should I eat?  Nobody really had asked that question until the Internet’s merry pranksters sought to embarrass Google’s AI and the ploy kind of worked.

Remember, generative AI revolves around scraping bushels of information across the web and sorting it into best answers.  Where there are few web documents, what are you going to expect? Garbage in, garbage out.

I just asked Google how to cook baby armadillo. It returned not a summary, overview paragraph but links to Youtube and websites that offered how-to’s.  Did those sites have silly info? Doubtless some did. But Google neatly ducked any blame for silly content by just pointing to it and allowing caveat emptor to rule.

If you were online 30 years ago every day you saw improvement.  Ditto nowadays.  Every day Google and Chat GPT get better.

For $19.99 per month I now get Google Gemini Advanced, its pro version, as well as two terabytes of storage and a few more benefits in a package marketed as Google One AI premium.

I just asked Gemini to tell me the best sites related to Spain’s Civil war (the battle between Fascists and progressives where the fascists won) and it came back with a list of the obvious — such as Picasso’s Guernica housed in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía — but also a pointer to Belchite, an Aragonese town that was “completely destroyed during the war and has been left as a memorial. It’s a haunting and evocative place that serves as a reminder of the conflict’s devastation.” I had never heard of Belchite and now it’s on my to do list.

Last weekend I was at Potato Patch Campground in Arizona and when I got home, to see if I missed anything i shouldn’t have, I just asked Gemini to tell me the best activities at Potato Patch.  It came back with hiking, wildlife viewing (can’t say I saw anything unusual but there were many signs saying black bears are around; I saw none), stargazing (indeed excellent), fishing at Mingus Lake nearby (I don’t fish but probably an excellent suggestion for some), scenic driving (you bet, the 10 mile drive in from US 17 is a twisting and turning maze with extraordinary views – but if you are driving keep your eyes on the road), visiting Jerome (we did and the old mining town is abuzz.  Gemini didn’t  mention it but a few miles beyond Jerome is Cottonwood, also worth a visit); and just kicking back at the campground which in fact has large individual camping spaces – private, quiet.  

In this Potato Patch case Gemini didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know but it did remind me of what makes Potato Patch worth multiple visits.

I’m just back from spending several nights in a hotel in Fountain Hills AZ where I attended long daily meetings and so I asked Gemini what’s the best hotel in Fountain Hills. When I saw the results I was surprised because the place I stayed at wasn’t on the list and nor were a few other places I knew of. Then it dawned on me that I’d asked the wrong question. So I went back with: what are the best resorts in Fountain Hills? The places I knew all popped up on that list (including where I stayed).

If at first you don’t like the results you are seeing, rephrase and try again.

My strong advice: when going anywhere ask Chat GPT or Google Gemini what to do there. You just may be surprised with the results. And you’ll probably learn about something you hadn’t been aware of or reminded of something cool that you’d forgotten

by Robert McGarvey

I was looking at the trio of wall-mounted dispensers in my hotel’s shower – truth is I was trying to decipher which was body soap but the typeface was too small and eventually I conceded and went out to the bedroom to retrieve my reading glasses.  

And then a memory popped up.  I recalled a conversation I had with a onetime client, maybe 15 years ago, and he was telling me his company, which managed dozens of hotels, reaped a huge advantage against stand alone properties because of its bulk buying of staples such as soaps, toilet paper, coffee, towels, the stuff hotels use in mass quantities.

Nothing special in that and then he said something that really caught my attention: “Of course I don’t use the in-room soaps. I bring my own.”

This was after TSA had decreed we travel only with miniature bottles and therefore he carefully poured his preferred shampoo, conditioner, body soap into little bottles before a trip.

Turns out he may have known something important long before I tumbled to it.

It was about that same time when big hotel groups began the phase out of individual mini bars of soap and tiny bottles of shampoo.  I remember them telling me this was good for the environment. Don’t forget they said that.

They didn’t say this but the shift to giant bottles could also save a few pennies of a housekeeper’s time because those big dispensers need less attention.

By about five years ago, the transition was over. Big jugs had won.  

That victory became all the plainer in 2019 when California passed a law prohibiting big hotels from using little toiletry bottles.  The flashpoint was a desire to decrease plastic waste, so out went single use tiny bottles.

Should you in fact use the big bottles in the shower?

Maybe not.

The hotel managers leading the conversion didn’t say those big jugs can spawn all manner of nastiness, which a onetime hotel manager took to TikTok to warn about.  She said she had seen bodily fluids in refillable shampoo and conditioner bottles and advised never to use them.

She added: “I’ve seen Nair and god knows what else in there.”

This should come as no real surprise.  One reason the capsule coffee machines have become standard issue in hotel rooms is that too many of us were using old fashioned Mr Coffee type carafes to make ramen, wash underwear, and who knows what else.  Personally I won’t use those carafes that still show up in some hotels even tho I am a big coffee drinker and I have developed a real fondness for hotels with giant coffee urns in the lobby.

If guests can use coffee makers to clean their socks, why wouldn’t I expect some would use in-room bulk toiletry dispensers for mischievous purposes?

Hotels aren’t ignorant about such worries. Many now boast that they use “tamper proof” containers and probably that will become the norm, just as tamper proof bottles rule the racks in our drug stores.

But removing that worry doesn’t necessarily deliver the win for the big containers.

That’s because there’s also an environmental argument against those bulk dispensers. Remember, this shift was purportedly fueled by environmental concerns of big hotel operators. That may be utter malarkey however. Per the Washington Post, “the greenest option is an old-school bar of soap made from plant oil or animal fat and lye, without many extra ingredients. Simple bar soap cuts greenhouse emissions by about a third compared with liquid soap, according to a study from the Institute of Environmental Engineering at the Swiss university ETH Zurich.”

Perhaps more curiously, research shows that many of us use more of the stuff that’s in those big bottles than we do with smaller bottles.  “Most of the studies show that people believe the product is less efficacious, meaning it doesn’t work as well, when they share it with strangers rather than friends,” UC Riverside marketing professor Thomas Kramer said. “Then, in some studies, it shows that it actually leads to them using more to make up for that perceived low efficacy.”

It’s in a big bottle and so we think it’s cheap (which probably it is) and, therefore, we use more of it to compensate for its inferiority. Multiply those greenhouse emissions.

Bottomline: my hotel executive/client was right. Bring your own toiletries. Ignore the giant dispenser on the shower walls and, whatever you do, don’t ever use an in-room coffee care except to wash underwear.

by Robert McGarvey

Sustainable jet fuel is a wonderful idea. US and European carriers all say they will reach zero carbon emission by 2050 and that hinges on use of lots of sustainable fuel. This matters in a world of climate change and, yes, air travel contributes just 2.5% of carbon emissions but it’s 2.5% that may not be necessary, both because a lot of business air travel is absolutely pointless (as many big companies realized during the pandemic) but also because there may be ways to drive emissions down to that zero goal.

Just listen to the carriers. Everybody in commercial aviation talks a good game when it comes to net zero carbon. But words are cheap.

The realities, in Europe and the US, are starkly different.

Tune into what is now happening in Europe where the European Commission is holding the feet of 20 carriers to the fires, saying they are simply greenwashing their actions.

Europe by the way has set ambitious goals regarding aviation and sustainability. Per POLITICO, “By 2025, 2 percent of the fuel powering aircraft in the EU has to be green, rising to 5 percent in 2030, and then increasing every five years to 70 percent in 2050. Airplanes currently use only a tiny amount of SAF, which is much more expensive than kerosene.”

It’s a fact that sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) – which is made out of things that aren’t petroleum – would dramatically reduce carbon emissions but there just isn’t much of it. In 2022 the US produced 1.8 million gallons of SAF, not even 0.1% of fuel used that year, a year where air travel in the US remained deflated by Covid fears. SAF also costs around 10X more than traditional jet fuels and, sure, as production scales prices will come down but nobody knows by how much.

Even so, all the major European carriers are busily defending their environmental efforts. Which are? Read the Politico piece which neatly sums up what they say they are doing. (Hint: they aren’t doing much substantive beyond talking.)

The upshot: European consumer groups now say the carriers are simply fibbing about their environment gains. The European Consumer Organization (BECU) has been especially pointed in its criticisms. Said BECU’s director general, Monique Goyens, “It is unacceptable that airlines have freely lured consumers into offsetting their flight’s emissions, sometimes at a high price. One can never be sure that the trees planted to compensate a flight’s high emissions will capture the carbon back into the ground – if they are planted at all…. Greenwashing is no longer acceptable, and the fact that aviation is one of the most highly polluting sectors makes it even more intolerable. Today’s crack down on greenwashing is encouraging at a time when consumers are expected to shift to more sustainable lifestyles.”

Which brings us to the big question: exactly what are US carriers doing?

Well, Delta, for instance, has been saying for several years that it is “carbon neutral.” But a lawsuit insists the claim is hooey because it hinges on carbon offsets that don’t do much good.

United has been hit with a similar suit alleging “false and misleading” statements.

But mainly we are silent about what the US carriers are (not) doing.

Where is the US government in this brouhaha? I don’t know, do you? Yes, the feds have ponied up tax credits up to $1.75 per gallon for SAF, but that’s not much claimed because there simply isn’t a lot of SAF on the market.

The White House also have unveiled a Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge that is about as exciting as the program’s name. There doesn’t appear to be substantial financial backing for the program but it certainly is rich in telling how grand it will be when aviation is sustainable.

Which maybe puts the ball in our court, that is, the passengers and for us there are “carbon offset” programs. Most airlines now offer such programs and they seem swell. Pony up a few bucks to plant trees and, shazam, your carbon from the flight is canceled out. Except it doesn’t work that way.

Reported the New York Times: “A carbon offset is a credit that you can buy to make up for your emissions. So if you fly from New York to San Francisco, releasing around 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, you can purchase an offset, funding a project that will remove or store that same amount of carbon dioxide elsewhere, often by planting or preserving trees.

At least that’s the idea. But many scientists object to the principle, on the grounds that we need to sharply reduce emissions, not just try to cancel them out.”

The Washington Post is more withering. Here’s the headline: “Airlines want you to buy carbon offsets. Experts say they’re a ‘scam.'”

That puts the shoes back in our own hands. The best step: fly less. Of course.

When that’s not an option, fly in economy. Pax up front contribute a lot more emissions.

Then there are lifestyle changes we can make such as driving less (walk more!) and driving an electric car.

All these are small steps, yes they are, but right now it’s up to us to make a personal difference because we simply can’t count on the airlines or our government.

by Robert McGarvey

Senators Jeff Merkley and John Kennedy want to make you wait in very long lines at airports.  That is a fact and the senators are seeking to amend the FAA reauthorization bill to include language to severely curtail use of biometrics to identify people at airports.

What Merkley-Kennedy ask for is to block expansion of biometrics at airports until 2027 and to make clear that passengers can opt out of it.  

That would call halt on the TSA plan to expand biometrics from today’s 25 airports to 430.  

Just what technology is involved? Per the New York Times, “Using kiosks with iPads affixed to them, passengers have their photographs taken and matched to an image from an ID, eliminating the need for workers to make such a match with their eyes.”

For his part, Merkley apparently believes it’s a god given right in the US not to have one’s photo taken without permission.  He is obviously oblivious to the many, many cameras built into people’s doorbells, for instance, but this is a guy who as a state legislator in Oregon fiercely opposed red light cameras

“The TSA program is a precursor to a full-blown national surveillance state,” said Senator Merkley. “Nothing could be more damaging to our national values of privacy and freedom. No government should be trusted with this power.”

Note: I did not make up that quote. It’s the Senator’s.

As for Senator Kennedy, he fumes that “Unless Congress reins in this program through our amendment to the F.A.A. reauthorization bill, I fear bureaucrats will start seizing and hoarding the biometrics of millions of travelers without explicit permission.”

Kennedy added: “Every day, TSA scans thousands of Americans’ faces without their permission and without making it clear that travelers can opt out of the invasive screening.”

I have to admit that when I’ve been aware of biometrics in use at airports I’ve applauded it.  Things just seemed to go faster, more smoothly.

I’m not alone. Far from it. Over half of us in the US use biometrics daily.  I know I use it multiple times a day, usually on an iPhone and in lieu of typing in a password. I much prefer to use biometrics and admit to scratching my head when I see the luddite idiocy from Kennedy and Merkley.

I’m not alone.

The U.S. Travel Association, a trade association involving many of the industry’s biggest players, bluntly says of the Merkley-Kennedy language: “According to a U.S. Travel Association analysis, the proposed amendment could result in travelers waiting an additional 120 million hours in TSA lines each year by significantly slowing both TSA PreCheck and standard screening lanes.”

The U. S. Travel Association adds: “Further, the senators’ proposal threatens national security by effectively banning TSA’s use of facial recognition technology for non-PreCheck passengers–which mal-intentioned individuals could exploit.”

Alexa C. Lopez, a T.S.A. spokeswoman, told the New York Times that photographs were not stored or saved after a positive ID match, “except in a limited testing environment for evaluation of the effectiveness of the technology.”

Besides, if TSA wants to hold my photo, have at it. Dozens of pix of me are readily found on the Internet. That privacy genie long ago fled the bottle.

“This proposed legislation threatens to turn America’s airports into the equivalent of college bars where fake IDs rule the day,” said Geoff Freeman, CEO of U. S. Travel Association. “TSA, to its credit, is innovating with the latest security technology and members of Congress are threatening to stand in its way–at the expense of the travel experience.”

At a glance, the Merkley-Kennedy language did not survive in the Senate’s latest version of the FAA bill. But don’t assume it’s RIP. Know that this Kennedy-Merkley language has been floating around the District for six months and it isn’t going away.  Like the Terminator it will come back even when you thought it was killed off, mainly because Kennedy and Merkley seem sincerely to believe the luddite bilge they spew.

Also know that over 18 million of us pay to use biometrics associated with Clear and that’s because they believe it speeds their way through the 55+ plus airports where it’s in use.

The winner in this battle already is known. But luddites got to do what luddites do, even when it is a hopeless mission.  
Write your senator and tell him/her to ignore Kennedy-Merkley. 

by Robert McGarvey

Money talks, you know what walks.  

On May 24 the Biden Administration announced final rules regarding refunds on flight delays and ancillary fees. You already know what it requires: refunds when a flight is delayed more than three hours domestically (six internationally).Refunds when baggage is significantly delayed. Refunds when paid for services aren’t delivered (WiFi, seat selection, inflight entertainment).

The reaction in the frequent flier community has been a yawn.  The refunds are ok as far as they go. But in the EU they go much farther in providing compensation to passengers; the US refunds are a pale carbon copy.  Yes, they are much better than the nothing we had (which was whatever the airline judged fair and we got it only when we jumped through all the hops an airline required) but the Biden package is a watered down disappointment.

In my view.

The trade group Airlines for America sees matters very differently. A statement said: “Unnecessary regulatory rules issued without collaboration will lead to three things: confusion for consumers, reduction in choice and a decline in competition, which historically drives up prices. Very simply put, a one-size-fits-all approach is anticompetitive and anticonsumer.”

Wait, requiring refunds for delayed flights is anticonsumer? This will drive up air fares?

There are moments, aren’t there, when today’s arguments seem like discarded scribbles from a rough draft of 1984. 

Yes, most consumers who understand what the DOT ruling requires wish there was more – but they also know that a slice of pie is better than the nothing airlines traditionally have handed out.

And then the stuff that walks got cranked up to an ear splitting volume by Ted Cruz and a few fellow travelers who want to erase the new DOT requirement that airlines make it easy for a consumer to ask for a refund (as opposed to the old, opaque processes that very probably nobody understood because it was never the intent that anyone actually use them).   

Cruz and his gaggle are cobbling together a bill to make this reversal happen.

The New Republic outlined what’s up here: “The bill would essentially make refunds only available to people who have the time and resources to navigate whatever processes an airline sets up. Plus, contacting an airline has never been easy to do. This would also seem to defeat the purpose of Biden’s new rule: hassle-free payback to inconvenienced travelers.”

What is interesting about the Cruz gaggle is that it is bipartisan, something that never happens in 2024 Washington DC. But, wait, remember our opening line. Jacobin tells what Cruz et. al. have in common. “All of them take substantial airline industry donations.”

Jacobin continued: “The lawmakers are four of the six largest congressional recipients of campaign cash from the airline industry in the current election cycle, according to data from the government transparency group OpenSecrets.”

Joining Cruz are Maria Cantwell and Rick Larsen (both Democrats from Washington where, um, isn’t Boeing headquartered there?) Sam Graves (R – Mo) is also in the group.

Much of the draft bill is plain vanilla, little to object to.

And then there’s a curveball: “Sets Clear Right to Refunds: For the first time, passengers will have clear standards in law for refunds when an airline cancels or significantly delays a flight.  A refund will be required if a domestic flight is delayed 3-hours and if an international flight is delayed 6-hours. Airlines will be required to display easy-to-find refund request buttons on their websites.”

That sounds good. It isn’t. What it does is undo the DOT rules and puts the burden for action back on the passenger, many of whom long ago gave up fighting with air carriers because it’s akin to trying to put an egg back into a cracked shell.

Usually, nobody except a low level aide would actually read such a routine document from Cruz et. al. That’s why it’s a perfect place to insert mayhem. 

But in this case clumsy Cruz stumbled and others took notice.  For instance: “Congress is using the latest FAA Reauthorization to weaken the DOT’s hugely popular new rule requiring automatic cash refunds for flight cancellations and delays—a watershed achievement issued just last week to protect passengers against too-big-to-care airlines,” said Morgan Harper, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project.

What can we do? Write your Senator and get this legislation stopped..

Sure, the Biden rules are disappointing…but they are better than the nothing burger Cruz et al are serving up.