Travel News – Green Cruises?, Travel Fights, AA Fires Designer, Driving Record, $10 Fee

The following two articles were written to address a fight between travel bloggers that heated up this week around the subject of cruising. This fight took place on twitter (using the #FollowMeAtSea has tag) and in blogs.

How Green Are Cruises? – By The Numbers

There has been a flame war on twitter recently between travel bloggers about what the ecological impact is of “mega cruise ships” on global warming. There are three main issues that I have seen raised:

1. Cruise ships consumer water
2. Cruise ships burn fuel
3. Cruise Ships dump sewage at sea

These are all true, but how true are they?

Stupid Travel Arguments (And Why We Should Stop Having Them)

One of the things you realize quickly when you start hanging around people who love to travel is that there’s a certain crowd that also likes to argue about travel. In this case, I’m not referring to the often entertaining discussions about the best beaches on which to watch a sunrise, which cities have the worst public transportation, or those “I can top that” tales of all manner of travel illnesses and mishaps.

Instead, I’m talking about the kind of arguments that pit one traveler against another, and are designed solely to make one person feel better at the expense of someone else.

It has been suggested that American Airlines’ website is so bad that they should fire their web designer. They did fire an unnamed web designer this week but not for his design work but for admitting publicly that their site needs work. This is not how to interact with social media.

American Airlines worker fired for replying to web user complaint

Mr Curtis, an American web designer, was unimpressed by his experience using the the AA.com website, and made that clear in a lengthy open letter to the company on his blog, complete with a suggested redesign of the homepage (see the gallery above), saying he would be “ashamed” of the site. He also suggested that they fire their design team.

Mr X, a web designer, responded to the letter, saying in a long email that Mr Curtis was “so very right” about the problems of the website, but that it was less to do with staff incompetence and more to do with the internal culture of the airline. Mr X also told Mr Curtis that they were improving the website, but that it was a slow process.

By speaking to Mr Curtis, however, Mr X was in breach of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) he had signed with AA, barring him from revealing sensitive information. According to Mr Curtis, after bosses at American Airlines became aware of Mr X’s response, they searched through their email database, found his identity and fired him for a breach of the NDA.

This story does not make me want to drive in South Korea.

Driver passes test at 950th attempt

A South Korean woman has passed the written exam required for a driver’s licence after hundreds of failed attempts over the past four years, police say.

Welcome to the United States. That will be $10 please.

U.S. Homeland chief defends $10 travel fee

European Parliament lawmakers on Friday demanded that U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ease restrictions for Europeans traveling to the United States, saying plans to impose a new $10 (euro6.73), entry fee are unfair.

Some bad news stories:

• British Airways to Lay Off Thousands
• Many tour firms ‘facing collapse’

But some good news:

• US Travel Industry to Add 90K American Jobs in 2010

Other stories that caught my eye:

• Could You Work in a Foreign Country to Pay for Travel?
• Why You Shouldn’t Wait to Travel
• Tarmac delay hall of shame: Delta, American — please take a bow!
• Hawaiian Airlines repeats as nation’s most punctual carrier