Between Christmas and New Year’s the northeastern part of the United States saw one of the worst snow storms in recent memory.  These storms caused hours and hours and even days of delays.  One of the biggest benefits of using AFC Travel for your travel needs is that we are here to help you and your group when these types of things arise.  One of our group agents, Dan, and our ticketing department stayed until almost midnight one night last week to help one of our groups of 120 students from Gateway Music Festivals get to Rome from New York.  ABC News did a story about travelers being stuck and even spoke to one of the group leaders from Gateway Music.  You can watch the video here.

Continental Airlines has come up with a new fee in the airline industry. In an era where the major US Carriers have already charged nearly $2 Billion in fees in 2010, there is yet another fee for you to consider when booking an airline ticket with Continental Airlines.  However, this fee might be worth paying for.

For those of you that can’t make a decision, Continental announced earlier this week that you can now hold and lock in a price for a ticket for up to seven days-for a fee of course.  You can lock into a fare for 72 hours starting at $5 or hold a fare on a ticket for seven days starting at $9.  The actual cost will vary and will be based on a number of items.  These fees are non-refundable.

You can read more about it here.

Airfare may be up, and the FEES airlines are charging are ridiculously frustrating – but here is something FOR FREE:

This holiday season, Google has teamed up with AirTran Airways, Delta, and Virgin America to offer free Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi on every domestic flight from November 20, 2010 through January 2, 2011. These participating airlines have outfitted their entire domestic fleet with Gogo Inflight Wi-Fi.

Just bring a Wi-Fi enabled laptop or mobile device and stay connected to family and friends while you travel.

…..Thank You Google – at least somebody cares….

Discover over 20 Exclusive Offers from AFC Travel / American Express http://conta.cc/ac0i1p via #constantcontact

Airtran, Delta and Virgin American are partnering with Google Chrome to offer free wifi while on qualified flights November 20 through January 2, 2011.  I wonder if other carrier’s will follow and soon, for the Holiday Season, wifi will be free.  Read more here.

While having status with airlines doesn’t have the benefits it used to offer, it can still be worth while if you fly one airline often.  Delta Airlines and American Express are offering a 50% mileage bonus on all the Membership Rewards points your transfer into your SkyMiles account by December 15, 2010.  In addition, if you transfer 50,000 points or more, you’ll receive 25,000 Medallion Qualification Miles (MQMs).  That is enough to earn Silver Status or even push you over to a higher level.  Some of the benefits of having Medallion status include waived baggage fees, unlimited upgrades and more.  You can attempt to register for the promo here.

American Airlines and American Eagle will add 10 destinations and 33 daily flights from Los Angeles, starting April 5.

The additions are a 28% increase in the carriers’ schedule from LAX.

American or Eagle will operate daily flights to the following cities (frequency in parentheses): Albuquerque, N.M. (3); Boise, Idaho (2); El Paso, Texas (2); Houston Bush Intercontinental (3); Oklahoma City (1); Phoenix (4); Shanghai (1); Salt Lake City (3); Sacramento, Calif. (4); and Tucson, Ariz. (3).

Also, American will offer two additional daily flights to Dallas/Fort Worth and Miami and one flight each to Chicago, Las Vegas and Orlando.

Per AA’s PR release:  The Los Angeles expansion is part of American’s strategy to beef up service from “cornerstone” markets, but the reality is – American does not want to see Delta capture more market share from LAX without a fight.