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E L L I O T T' S TRAVEL NOTES
Travel news, opinion and analysis

May 3, 2004

Airlines Gave Up Data After Attacks
In the days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, the nation's largest airlines, including American, United and Northwest, turned over millions of passenger records to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, airline and law enforcement officials acknowledged Friday. A senior official with the F.B.I. said the airlines cooperated willingly. Some, like Northwest, provided as much as a year's worth of passenger records, which typically include names, addresses, travel destinations and credit card numbers. "There was no reluctance on the part of anybody," added the senior F.B.I. official, who said that bureau rules required him to speak anonymously. The official said the requests were made under the bureau's general legal authority to investigate crimes and that the requests were accompanied by subpoena, not because that was required by law or because the bureau expected resistance from the airlines, but as a "course of business" to ensure that all proper procedures were followed. The New York Times | Posted 6:30 a.m.
-- Post: United complied with a criminal investigation

• Most law-abiding passengers don't have a problem with law enforcement officials having access to basic data, as I pointed out in a recent commentary. It's the criminals - and their well-meaning, often unwitting advocates - who demand more "privacy." Send us your comments.

Delta Solves Computer Glitch
A computer glitch that grounded Delta Air Lines flights to and from Atlanta for about 6 1/2 hours and caused delays over the weekend has been solved, and the airline was trying to determine the cause of the malfunction. "We are still investigating that and we don't have information yet as to the exact nature of the problem," said Liza Caceres, a spokeswoman for the nation's third-largest airline. Caceres said 40 Delta flights were canceled Saturday and 32 were delayed early Sunday. The delays were cleared by midmorning Sunday, she said. Delta told the Federal Aviation Administration it had a problem with dispatch computers, which calculate weight and balance and handle information related to preparation for flight, plus gate information, FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said. The problem began at 2:50 p.m. Saturday; computers finally were back online at 9:30 p.m. Free Press | Posted 6:45 a.m.

No 'Respect' for Hotel Web Sites
Set your own online house in order. That's the short-but-sweet advice one Seattle-area technology watchdog has for some of the nation's largest lodging providers, including several Las Vegas hotel-casino operators, that have recently expressed concerns over consumers' increased use of third-party Internet travel reservation firms such as Orbitz, Hotwire or Expedia. The Customer Respect Group, a Bellevue, Wash.-based company, routinely studies how many of the world's largest businesses treat their consumers online. On April 26, the group released its spring 2004 Online Consumer Respect Study focusing on tourism-related companies and their Web sites. Its findings showed that most hotel company-operated Web sites still have room to improve before consumers consider them equal to their third-party competitors. Las Vegas Review-Journal | Posted 7 a.m.
-- Read the press release on the study

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• And finally ... we're holding our biannual fundraiser on this site. You could win free TravelPro luggage and a Hilton weekend. Here's how. Posted 7:10 a.m. | Send us your comments.

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