mileage mall Delta frequent flyer members have a new online earning option at www.skymilesshopping.com. There, SkyMiles members can rack up more miles in their accounts by buying merchandise from more than 100 brand-name retailers, including Bose, Circuit City, Eddie Bauer, The Gap, L.L. Bean, Sharper Image, Target and others. The average payout is four miles per dollar spent, although it varies by retailer and can go as high as 10 miles per dollar.
on-time data You can check the historical on-time performance data for specific flights at the Transportation Department's Bureau of Transportation Statistics Web site (www.bts.gov). Scroll down the home page to "Airline On-Time Statistics." There you select the airline and type in the flight number, and the site will provide you with detailed information on that flight's operational performance for the period you designate—up to a year at a time. It will tell you not only how late the flight usually departs, but how late it tends to arrive, and even how long you can expect to sit on the ground before takeoff.
new plane Boeing's board of directors has approved the company's plan to build its first new commercial aircraft in years, known for now as the 7E7. To learn more about the innovations in this new plane, go to www.newairplane.com. For example, the 7E7 will permit longer non-stop flights than today's 250-seat aircraft—e.g., Atlanta to Johannesburg—and will have the largest windows of any plane around. You can also sign up at the site to contribute your own opinions to Boeing about airliner design.
rain or shine? What should you pack? That depends on what the weather will be like at your destination. Just before departure, you can search for forecasts covering the next five days virtually anywhere in the world through Yahoo, at http://weather.yahoo.com. If you want to select travel dates for a future trip based on what the weather's likely to be at that time of year, look for historical monthly temperature and rainfall averages at World Climate (www.worldclimate.com).
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