My name was involved in a curious intrigue this week. One of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s aides, in an attempt to get back at the Washington Times for a recent series of critical stories about Clinton’s deputy Jacob Lew, leaked to a reporter unpaid bills for trips I took with the secretary last year.
I understand the bills are now being settled, following yesterday’s story on the Foreign Policy magazine’s website. I was the Times’ diplomatic correspondent for nine years, until June.
When reporters travel with the secretary, the State Department charges their respective media for the plane ride and any costs incurred on the ground, such as motorcade vehicles and filing centers. Sometimes, those bills are sent out months after a trip, but every time I received one, I gave it to the appropriate person at the Times, along with the original trip authorization from senior management.
I’m told that four unpaid bills have been sitting in a folder in the accounting office for months. Shortly before I left the paper, I was asked how important it is to pay them quickly, given the Times’ tight finances. I pointed out that the bills are overdue, but that was the last time the subject came up.
The Times has had a new editor since January, and it’s possible the issue was never raised with him. It appears he has now made sure the matter is resolved.
This was certainly a very creative way for the State Department to get its money back. Isn’t the Washington game just precious? The stories the Times has been running about Lew have to do with his financial disclosures from his time at Citigroup, before joining the Obama administration. Since I haven’t worked at the paper for two months, I obviously had nothing to do with those stories — nor did I have a hand in any articles about Lew that may have been written before my departure.
Lew has been deputy secretary of state for management since January 2009, and earlier this summer, President Obama chose him as the next director of the White House Office of Management and Budget — a post he held at the end of the Clinton administration.
Continue reading about My trips with Clinton back in the news
Air travel is one of those topics that no radio or TV show can go wrong with — it’s certain to touch a nerve with many people and provoke numerous comments and questions. That’s what happened yesterday on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, which I was on for the first time.
I always thought the reason to be invited would be to talk about foreign policy on the Friday news roundup, where Diane has three Washington journalists discussing issues from the passing week. That never happened, but a couple of weeks ago I suggested to one of the show’s producers that the summer is a good time for a program on travel.
The Diane Rehm Show is widely considered the best talk show on NPR, with more than 2 million listeners a week. It’s produced by WAMU, the NPR station in DC, and airs in dozens of markets across the U.S. Diane is on vacation this week, so the guest-host was Frank Sesno, a former CNN bureau chief in DC who now heads the George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.
There were two other guests except me: from Dallas, Scott McCartney, who writes “The Middle Seat” column for The Wall Street Journal, and from New York, Susan Stellin, a New York Times contributor.
You can listen to the show and read some of the comments left by listeners on its website. We actually got hundreds of comments and questions by phone, e-mail and on Facebook and Twitter.
We talked about various familiar topics, such as airline fees, seats, delays, the proposed Passengers’ Bill of Rights, re-regulation prospects and others.
Since the show’s topic was “Navigating the not-so-friendly skies,” I wanted to offer some advice on how to do that. The main point I tried to make was about the need for travel education, realizing that most people don’t see such a need because they think they know how to travel. But if that were true, we’d be hearing many fewer complaints and horror stories about air travel.
It’s convenient and popular to blame the airlines all the time — and they often deserve much of that blame — but there is a lot travelers can do to make their own experience less stressful and more seamless.
The airlines have made the system very complex, confusing and frustrating. It is what it is, and we can’t changed it that much. However, we can find ways to make the system work for us — and to do that, we need to know it really well. That’s why I believe every traveler can use a bit of education.
My other main point was about the importance of elite airline status, which is the only decent way to travel today. The reality is that airlines don’t even pretend to try taking care of you if something goes wrong unless you are a loyal customer. More practically, elite passengers are exempt from luggage and other fees.
Unfortunately, most people don’t even try to achieve elite status, because they only travel a couple of times a year. As I wrote last month, you only need 4,000 miles on Greece’s Aegean Airlines to get silver status on the Star Alliance, and Aegean gives you 1,000 miles just for signing up. You don’t have to fly on Aegean — just to credit your miles from flights on any of the 28 Star carriers to that program. Silver status waives baggage fees on United Airlines, US Airways and Continental Airlines.
I was amused to read in the comments on the Diane Rehm Show’s website that a listener accused me of being unpatriotic for recommending membership in a foreign airline’s frequent-flier program.
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Media coverage of travel seminars
Continue reading about Talking air travel for an hour on NPR
The first “On the Fly” Seminars are just days away, and I thought I’d review the media mentions of my new venture and my appearances so far.
USA TODAY’s “Today in the Sky” travel blog was first, on June 11. Its author, Ben Mutzabaugh, asked me a few questions while I was at a conference in Moscow, and did a writeup, which prompted some reader comments about the need to teach the material I offer. Here is an excerpt:
Want to become a frequent-flier expert? There’s a class for that. In fact there are two: “Saving on airfare and redeeming frequent-flier miles” is the basic course, while the “advanced” class is dubbed “Securing top elite status and flying in luxury.” Each course comes complete with its own curriculum and “recommended reading.”
The courses are the brainchild of Nicholas Kralev, who has wracked up more than 1.5 million miles during the past decade in his previous job as the diplomatic correspondent and business travel columnist for The Washington Times. A large part of Kralev’s job involved traveling with the U.S. secretary of state, a position which took him to far-flung corners of the Earth while covering the likes of Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and Madeleine Albright…
“In a way, I owe much of my travel knowledge and experience to the State Department,” Kralev tells me by e-mail. “Had it been cheaper and more comfortable to fly on the secretary’s plane — any secretary, and I’ve traveled with four of them — I wouldn’t have flown so much commercially. Consequently, I wouldn’t have figured out how to spend much less or airfare but [still] sleep in flat beds, eat gourmet meals and earn hundreds of thousands of miles…”
The next day, Tom Johansmeyer picked up the item on gadling.com, which I warmly welcome — except that he misspelled my last name, putting a “y” where the “v” should be. Not the end of the world…
Another blog, that of Travel Sentry, which its website describes as a company that “creates and manages standards which improve travel security in cooperation with government security agencies, airlines, airports and the travel goods industry,” did a post on June 14. Here is now it ended:
Not only is the cost reasonable, but just imagine acquiring the skills to fly like a king for a fraction of the retail cost. Kralev hopes to take his show on the road soon. If he comes to a city near me, I’ll definitely give him a shot.
Too bad the company’s website doesn’t indicate its location, so I can actually plan a seminar there.
On June 18, I did my first broadcast interview about the seminars, on WTOP radio in Washington, where I’ve spoken on foreign-policy issues before. They wanted me to explain how I’m able to secure the lowest available fares and still not sit in coach — in a couple of minutes. And I was afraid that a four-hour seminar would be too short to achieve that!
Airlinetrends.com, a Netherlands-based website, published a very well-written article about the seminars, which they call a “smart business-feeder concept,” on June 22. Here is an excerpt:
“On the Fly” offers 2 types of seminars: In the “Fly 101″ session, participants learn how to find and book the cheapest available plane tickets without relying on travel agents or third-party online booking engines, and how to use their accrued miles for award flights and upgrades. The “Fly 201″ course is intended for frequent travelers who aim to achieve and maintain elite airline status. Participants are given techniques on how to find seats, and explore all options their miles can get them, including flights on partner-carriers, which are usually not offered online.
The State Department plans to create seven new senior positions to ensure that a public-diplomacy perspective is always “incorporated” in policy-making around the world, as well as to respond quickly to negative coverage of the United States in foreign media.
In an ambitious strategy that goes beyond any previous efforts to reach out to other countries, the Obama administration “seeks to become woven into the fabric of the daily lives of people” there, its top public-diplomacy official said Wednesday.
“We must do a better job of listening, learn how people in other countries and cultures listen to us, understand their desires and aspirations, and provide them with information and services of value to them,” said Judith A. McHale, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs…
Continue reading about State plans new public diplomacy posts
Public relations departments of airlines can’t catch a break. Not only is their industry under constant scrutiny by the public and the traditional media, now they have bloggers to worry about.
Let’s face it — the news hasn’t been great lately. How do you spin reducing services while adding fees? Or keeping fuel charges intact when oil prices are three times lower than they were when those charges were imposed? Part of a journalist’s job is to “unspin” what businesses — or the government, for that matter — tell the public, but another part is to do so fairly and to present different sides to every story.
Bloggers, however, have no such obligation. They are free to rant about any grudge they may hold against a company without worrying about bias, and they have become a part of the media that many airlines keep an eye on and even try to influence…
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