If it’s after Thanksgiving, then it’s time for the annual travel bloggers’ fundraiser Passports with Purpose, which kicked off today for its fourth year.

The goal for 2011 is to raise $80,000 during the next few weeks for construction and initial support of two libraries in Zambia through Room to Read, a nonprofit organization focused on literacy and gender equality in education. As Pam Mandel, one of the co-founders of Passports with Purpose, said, “We love reading. We love writing. We love libraries. We can totally get behind Room to Read.”

More than 100 travel bloggers from around the world are participating with donated prizes such as hotel stays, tours, travel gear, services, electronics and gift cards, each valued between $100 and $5,000.

For each $10 tax-deductible donation on the Passports with Purpose site, a person can enter to win a prize of their choice. Donations for multiple prizes and multiple $10 increments are acceptable, as are direct donations without entering for a prize. Bidding ends on Dec. 16, 2011, with a winner for each prize randomly selected on Dec. 23. All proceeds go directly to Room to Read.

Examples of some of the prizes include:

• Two-night stay at the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort & Spa, from No Vacation Required
• Three-night Marquis Los Cabos stay with one dinner for two, a bottle of Marquis wine and private shopping tour of Luxury Avenue with $1,000 peso gift card, from What a Trip (a blog by Uptake’s Lodging Blog editor Nancy D. Brown)
• 110,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points good for five nights at any Hyatt worldwide, from Loyalty Travel “Celebrity Chef Gourmet Cooking Experience” for two at the Freestyle Escape Outdoor Kitchen in Queensland, Australia, from Roaming Tales
• Kindle Fire, from Vacation Gals
• 15-day 1st class adult Eurail Global Flexi Pass, from BootsnAll

The travel bloggers will use their websites and social media outlets to promote the charity auction. The groundwork for establishing the two libraries already has begun. The libraries will be located next to the Masulwe Basic School and Chilileka Basic School. Hundreds of children will soon have access to a dedicated library staffed by a trained librarian and filled with colorful, age-appropriate books in their own language. Through Room to Read’s Challenge Grant model, the communities are co-investing by contributing to the libraries through volunteer labor and donated materials, resulting in the library’s long-term sustainability.

Passports with Purpose was started in 2008 by Mandel along with Debbie Dubrow, Michelle Duffy and Beth Whitman, the bloggers behind Nerd’s Eye View, Delicious Baby, WanderMom, and Wanderlust and Lipstick, respectively, in order to leverage the online travel-writing community to raise money and do long-lasting good for people and places around the world.

Each year the group chooses a partner organization, and so far, each year the initial goal set for the fundraiser has been surpassed. In prior years, Passports with Purpose donations have benefited Heifer International and helped build the Passports School with American Assistance for Cambodia and a village in Tamil Nadu, India, for 25 Dalit families with Land for Tillers’ Freedom.

Additional partners for Passports with Purpose 2011 include platinum sponsor Round the World with Us, a family of travelers committed to raising awareness of global issues and helping people better understand other cultures; silver sponsor Travellerspoint, a large travel community that claims to have members representing every country in the world; and bronze sponsor HomeAway, the large online marketplace for vacation rentals.

For more information or to donate, visit www.passportswithpurpose.org.

Photo: Passports with Purpose

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After several months of increasing speculation by investors, the parent company of American Airlines, AMR Corporation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today. It is the last of the major U.S. carriers to do so, and the only one that didn’t turn a profit in 2010.

Rising jet-fuel prices and labor costs, combined with increased competition due to mergers of other carriers—pushing the once largest domestic carrier to the No. 3 slot—are the main reasons behind the filing. According to the Wall Street Journal, AMR stock stopped trading early on Monday and closed at $1.62, down 54 percent over the past three months.

What does this mean for travelers with American Airlines tickets and miles?

In the short-term, not much. According to a statement released by the Fort Worth, Texas-based company, AMR has $4.1 billion in cash to ensure the uninterrupted supply of goods and services, and will be conducting business as usual. The airline expects to:

• Provide safe and reliable service;
• Fly normal schedules;
• Honor tickets and reservations, and make exchanges and refunds as usual;
• Fully maintain AAdvantage frequent-flyer and other customer-service programs, and ensure all AAdvantage miles and elite status earned by members remain secure and intact;
• Provide Admirals Club access and similar amenities to members and eligible customers;
• Remain an integral member of the oneworld alliance, of which American is a founding member; and
• Continue its codeshare partnerships.

That noted, airlines in bankruptcy protection typically do tend to reduce their schedules while they try to regain their financial bearings, which could have long-term affects for certain destinations.

One short-term advantage for travelers is that after a Chapter 11 filing, the airline often offers substantial sales in an attempt to maintain customers who might be leery about flying on a bankrupt carrier.

Also, members of American’s AAdvantage frequent-flyer program should keep their eyes peeled for special deals too, such as even more offers bonus-point earnings or reduced miles for redemption, as the airline will want to make sure it keeps its most loyal customers during the restructuring.

In a separate announcement, the AMR board of directors has appointed Thomas W. Horton chairman, CEO and president of American Airlines, succeeding Gerard Arpey, who has decided to retire.

Photo: American Airlines

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On the Transportation Security Administration’s 10th anniversary, TSA and American travelers still have a lot of work to do on their relationship. So says a recent survey commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association, the results of which association CEO Roger Dow shared earlier this month at a press conference at Washington Reagan National Airport.

About two-thirds of travelers are satisfied with the job the TSA is doing on security, but 80 percent say that the most unpleasant parts of flying have to do with security checkpoints. Their biggest gripes:

• 72.4 percent chose “people who bring too many carry-on bags through the security checkpoint”
• 68 percent chose “the wait time to clear the TSA checkpoint”
• 62.3 percent chose “having to remove shoes, belts and jackets at the TSA checkpoint”
• 42.5 percent chose “TSA employees who are not friendly”

U.S. Travel suggested that improving the checkpoint process could encourage Americans to fly more often, and indicated that both TSA and airlines could play a role in easing some of the headache that the security process induces. Airlines could make it easier to enroll in the new trusted-traveler program PreCheck and help reduce the number of carry-on bags going through passenger checkpoints (we’re looking at you, ever-increasing checked-bag fees).

Travelers’ impressions of TSA aren’t all bad, the survey showed. A majority believe the agency is on the “right track” with PreCheck, the decision to eliminate pat downs for children, software upgrades that replace personal body images with a generic body image and a decision to phase out the removal of shoes.

Photo: Inha Leeks Hale

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First, we could no longer lock our checked luggage and had to start worrying about baggage handlers taking items out of our bags. Now we have to worry about them putting things in. Illegal things. Like drugs.

Last week, the New York Post reported that Queens-based Roger Levans sued Delta Air Lines over his drug arrest Dec. 29, 2010, at JFK International Airport, when he departed his flight arriving from Guyana, where he had been visiting family. When passing through customs, officers found bricks of cocaine in his luggage. Bricks that Levans says he knew nothing about.

Yesterday, another article in the Post reports that several travelers were detained recently, again at JFK, after a drug-smuggling plot to move cocaine through unsuspecting passengers’ suitcases was discovered.

Turns out drug traffickers have been paying airline employees in other countries to place drugs in luggage headed to the United States and mark the bags so that the handlers on the receiving end can remove the packages from the marked bags before the luggage is picked up by innocent passengers.

Unfortunately, sometimes employees on the receiving end miss the bags and fail to remove the drugs. That’s when the passenger nightmares begin, and apparently is what happened to Levans.

After checking his bags at the airport in Guyana, handlers allegedly removed the lock from one of Levans’ bags—passengers can now lock their luggage if using a Transportation Security Administration-approved lock for which handlers have a master key—placed the cocaine in the suitcase and tied a ribbon on the handle to indicate to handlers in JFK that drugs were inside.

Levans had to endure being arrested and strip searched, was suspended from his job, and went through three months of investigations in both Guyana and the United States before officials determined that his bags had been tampered with.

The good news is that this trafficking trick has been discovered by authorities and been made aware to the traveling public. (The additional good news for Levans is that he was reinstated at his place of employment.) The bad news is that who knows if drug smugglers will continue to use it and unwittingly trap innocent victims.

Do you think knowing about this smuggling plot will cause travelers to reconsider checking their bags for flights? Or is the risk too small?

Photo: WikiCommons

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