Recent content by flitcraft

Just returned from a trip on the westbound Empire Builder with the new menu. Overall, there are fewer options, not a good thing. And no indication that you are allowed to ask for a lunch item at dinner, especially unfortunate with options being reduced. But here is my review of the good, the...

One other aspect of the Bid Up process I should mention is that we had a connection on our reservation, leaving from Seattle on the CS in coach and the from Portland to Chicago in a roommate as booked. (Our nephew was going to meet us at the station in Portland to wish my husband a happy...

Tech non-savvy boomer here, with a tip: We're booked on the Empire Builder, Portland to Chicago in a roomette, and when I got the email that we could try for a bedroom I thought I'd go for it. I filled out the form, got all the way to the end, but the Place Your Bid bar wouldn't register. Tried...

The CZ is probably the single most popular long distance train for scenery, and it sells out sleepers fast. Assuming you mean this coming May, you need to hop on this right away. There is a new, non-Amtrak website for checking prices across a series of dates, railforless.us. It has just gone...

Is there any problem for passengers coming or going from Lancaster? We are headed that way in March and returning from that station late April.

Low costs airlines, post deregulation, have often been shortlived. According to the GAO, in the first twenty five years of airline de-regulation there were 160 airline bankruptcies, most of which ended up terminal for the airlines in question. The economics of airlines is not as simple as most...

It is true that winter is the rainy season on the West Coast, but where it is rainiest depends on which of two weather oscillations happens that year: In El Nino years, like this winter, most of the storms track southward into California, and the Pacific Northwest is comparatively drier. LA and...

Definitely call Amtrak Guest Rewards. You don't have to be using points, though of course you can. And they will apply your voucher, no problem. I've gotten to the point where I don't even bother trying to book online or via agents rustled up by Julie. Just be sure to have your AGR number...

Yikes! I'm traveling to Portland seven weeks from tomorrow to catch the EB from there (and say happy birthday to a friend at the Portland Amtrak station). Wonder if I'll be in trouble if six weeks means instead "most of the spring."

Minimum liability coverage in general is completely inadequate to cover the predicted costs of accidents. Maybe a little more can be squeezed out of the defendant in a bankruptcy proceeding, but that's pretty much it, unless you have a business or are an individual with assets to supplement the...

On the anti-icing system problem, it already exists in some existing Boeing planes approved by the FAA for flight. Boeing and the FAA's rationale for allowing this is that pilots are aware of the issue and can turn the system on and off as needed. Unfortunately, all it takes is one flight crew...

That would have required keeping on the engineering and design staff at Renton, which would have been the kind of expense that depresses shareholder value and makes new aircraft expensive. Having to work with legacy computer code that new engineering graduates don't know meant that the later...

Indeed! Our TV weatherfolk in Seattle were struggling to describe exactly how unusual it was--only two low temperature records, so that doesn't sound like much, but four low-high readings. More impressive. Also the second longest stretch (nearly five full days) where the temperature never...

Another landslide, near Kelso, has halted both the Cascades and the Coast Starlight between Seattle and Portland till sometime on Sunday. Apparently CS passengers are being bustituted between Portland and Seattle. Article linked (paywalled)...

I know of no airlines, even low cost carriers, that make profits by foregoing maintenance. One fatal crash will cost the airline more than years of maintenance--and if you get caught by regulators, you're hosed even without a crash. How low cost airlines make a profit isn't through ticket...