news about cheap fares and airlines from travel search engine Trabber

The first flights of the new airlines that will take tourists past the threshold of space are poised to take off in 2012, and getting a seat on one is not all that different from booking a trip someplace on Earth. You can sign up on the Web site of, say, Virgin Galactic, the most prominent of the new space tourism companies, or go to a travel agent and put down a hefty deposit. Soon you will be able to buy travel insurance, just as you can for any other vacation.

Virgin Galactic intends to start offering flights just beyond the space barrier on a rocket ship it has built, featuring five minutes of weightlessness during a two-and-a-half hour jaunt. At $200,000 a seat.

When the question of whether to offer space travel insurance first came up three or four years ago, “‘we said it was a joke at that time,”‘ recalled Erick Morazin, global accounts director at Allianz Global Assistance.

Currently, Virgin Galactic, XCOR and Space Adventures refund almost all of the deposit if someone wants to cancel, but Mr. Morazin said he expected their policies to become less forgiving in the future. “‘We will be prepared for this milestone,'” he said.

source: nytimes.com

Boarding an airplane has never been safer.

The past decade has been the best in the country’s aviation history with 153 fatalities. That’s two deaths for every 100 million passengers on commercial flights, according to an Associated Press analysis of government accident data.

The improvement is remarkable. Just a decade earlier, at the time the safest, passengers were 10 times as likely to die when flying on a U.S. plane. The risk of death was even greater during the start of the jet age, with 1,696 people dying – 133 out of every 100 million passengers – from 1962 to 1971. The figures exclude acts of terrorism.

source: sfgate.com

Argentine authorities are tracing a suspected major animal trafficking ring after a Czech man was caught trying to smuggle hundreds of snakes and other exotic animals out of the country.

Karel Abelovsky was arrested in early December as he tried to board a flight to Spain from Buenos Aires.

Suspicions were raised when staff manning the airport X-ray machine at Ezeiza airport saw his suitcase moving.

It was found to contain some 250 animals, including 10 boa constrictors.

source: BBC.co.uk

Wi-Fi on long flights seems like a no-brainer, but travelers are apparently sticking to other tried-and-true boredom killers in the air ” like celebrity magazines and booze. According to SplatF, of the 355 million people who have flown on planes equipped with Gogo’s inflight Wi-Fi since 2008, only 15 million sessions have been logged, which means that only 4% of people are going online.

Gogo, which just filed to go public, makes up 85% of the inflight Wi-Fi business, providing 1,323 planes with service. While only a small percentage of airline passengers sign on to Gogo’s Wi-Fi, there’s good news ” 84% of commercial planes in North America are still without Internet service, meaning there’s a huge untapped market out there just waiting to get wired.

Source: Time

Proposals to allow twin-engined civilian passenger jets to fly over the Arctic will dramatically reduce flight times and make destinations on the other side of the globe a one-flight hop.

Until now, regulators have insisted the planes must always be within three hours of a suitable place to land.

This is because mechanical problems on a twin-engine plane a potentially far more serious than for a jet with three or four.

But US airline authorities have now nearly doubled the time limit to five-and-a-half hours to take into account the vast improvements in aircraft engine technology.

It is expected that the European Aviation Safety Agency will follow suit.

source: Dailyrecord.co.uk

Britain is unlikely to enjoy any boost in the number of tourists visiting the country next year – even though 2012 will see the country host two of its biggest events in decades.

Both the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, in June, and the Olympic Games, in July and August, will light up the UK calendar in 2012 – but neither of these big moments will produce a significant boom in holidaymakers from overseas, according to VisitBritain.

The UK tourist authority has forecast that 30.7million visitors will head to Britain next year – roughly the same number who are recorded as visiting over the last 12 months.

source: Dailymail.co.uk

Bankers may be languishing in popularity polls but a new airline wants their business and is prepared to challenge British Airways for it once the financial crisis is over.

A British venture called Odyssey Airlines hopes to start non-stop all-business class flights from London City to New York and other locations using 10 newly-ordered Bombardier CSeries passenger jets, aviation industry sources told Reuters.

The disclosure lifts a mystery surrounding the identity of one of the buyers for a Canadian jet which aims to break into a market long dominated by Airbus and Boeing.

source: Reuters

President Raul Castro put on ice highly-anticipated plans to ease travel restrictions on Cubans, telling lawmakers the nation would not be pressured into moving too fast and citing continued aggression from the United States as the reason for his cautious approach.

Cuba has been awash in speculation the much-hated regulations, which prevent most Cubans from leaving the island, might be lifted during Friday’s session of the National Assembly. But Castro said the time still wasn’t right, despite a year of free-market reforms that has seen the Communist government legalize a real estate market and greatly increase private business ownership.

“‘Some have been pressuring us to take the step … as if we were talking about something insignificant, and not the destiny of the revolution,'” Castro said, adding that those calling for an end to the travel restrictions “‘are forgetting the exceptional circumstances under which Cuba lives, encircled by the hostile policy … of the U.S. government.'”

source: AP

A flight attendant who started a fire on an aircraft mid-flight just so he could ”play the hero” by putting it out has been jailed for more than six years.

Eder Rojas, 23, risked the lives of 72 passengers and four crew members, when he set fire to paper towels in the plane’s rear bathroom while he was working on the Compass Airlines flight.

Investigators accused Rojas, of Woodbury, Minnesota, of starting the fire because he was unhappy about working the route from Minneapolis to Regina, Saskatchewan.

A tearful Rojas said that he was sorry for what he did and would accept any punishment he received.

source: dailymail.co.uk

Paris is launching an electric car sharing program to cut air and noise pollution on the city’s medieval cobblestone streets and beyond.

‘Autolib’, a project built on the success of the city’s bike rental scheme, makes its debut today and officials want the self-service ‘e-cars’ to be as much a part of Paris life as the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame Cathedral.

While many world cities have been developing greener alternatives to carbon-emitting vehicles, Paris says its program is the biggest of its kind: 250 vehicles hit the road on Monday, 2000 are expected by next summer and 3000 are planned within the next two years.

source: news.smh.com.au