Flew Midwest Airlines recently

I flew Midwest Airlines recently. What a treat! The seats are leather and are the size of first class seats on other airlines. The seat pitch isn't the same as first class on other domestic airlines (it's less), but it does seem to be slightly greater than the other domestic's coach offerings (Compare Midwest's 34" to Delta's 32" or United's 31. If I lived in one of Midwest's hub cities (Milwaukee and Kansas City), I'd make it my primary airline.

While I've read articles that suggest Midwest only has one class of seating, they do offer 'Signature' seating on some flights. According to their site, it's only available on some routes (they weren't available on my flights, as it wasn't the plane that has those seats). It's possible to upgrade to those seats for $60.

The free chocolate chip cookies Midwest offers are the best part of the flight. Apparently, they're going to start selling them retail some place in Milwaukee. I'm updating my airline food post just on the basis of the chocolate chip cookies, they were so good.

Automatic rebooking and other useful airline tools

Ignore the headline in this article. It's actually about useful airline tools like automatic rebooking, and not about those useless text message alerts that a flight is going to be delayed that arrive on your cell phone 2 hours after the flight was scheduled for departure. Orbitz seems to be leading the way:

Lockhart, it turns out, is a "care specialist" at Orbitz, a big online travel agency you may think of as just a place to score cheap flights. But with flight delays and airport hassles reaching epic proportions, few travel companies can afford not to guide frustrated customers through their travel problems. At its Chicago headquarters, Orbitz has created a command center staffed by a determined team of former air-traffic controllers, travel agents and even pilots, all focused on freeing folks from airport purgatory. On this day Lockhart, a travel agent for more than two decades, runs up a good tally: 19 of her 24 travelers will get rebooked. "This is my favorite part of the job," she says, after unstranding one more.

Now that is something really useful! No more waiting in line or on hold to rebook canceled flights. This alone is a reason to choose Orbitz over other flight booking options.

Other new services are mentioned in the article, such as Travelocity's reconfirming of hotel rooms before the customer arrives, but none seem as useful as Orbitz's automatic rebooking.

Guide to Social Security

No quotes, comments or any analysis in this post. Just a link to the Journal which has a worthwhile read on Social Security (free WSJ Digg link).

National Geographic Traveler ombudsman's blog

Christopher Elliott, is ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine, maintains a fabulous travel troubleshooting blog at http://www.elliott.org/category/the-troubleshooter/ (I discovered it through the CNN travel site, which syndicates the articles. His site contains many more articles.) It makes for a great read.