Hurricane Ike Expected To Cause Travel Disruptions

Even if you are not planning travel through the projected path of Hurricane Ike, you may be in for travel delays the next few days.

The 10am CDT advisory from the National Hurricane Center brings Ike onshore, west of Houston somewhere between a category 2 and category 4 Hurricane. Strong winds, heavy rainfall and isolated tornadoes are expected. Ike has a particularly large wind field, and regardless the actual landfall, areas up to 275 miles from the eye of the Hurricane may experience sustained tropical storm force winds.

Several flights have already been cancelled. As a result, airlines are offering alternative arrangements for passengers flying in or through the risk areas. Even if you are not traveling through Ike's path, your particular plane might have been scheduled to earlier in the day, thereby resulting in your flight to be delayed or cancelled. It is highly recommended that you check the flight status of your departing flight before heading for the airport.

Major airline hubs in the affected area:
Houston - Continental Airlines
Dallas/FW - American Airlines

(Image courtesy of National Weather Service Fort Worth)

Continental Airlines began testing of paperless boarding passes last week at Houston Airport. If all goes well, you'll be paperless for an upcoming flight as well. How does this technology work? Passengers can use cellular phones or PDA’s as boarding passes using encrypted bar codes. It cuts out all of the needless paper usage AND in totally in sync with the way technology is developing today. The barcodes are received by the passenger as an SMS text message. Passengers will receive their boarding passes electronically, then present the barcode to be scanned by the TSA at the security checkpoint. The idea is to provide additional security, as the barcodes are not as easily reproduced as counterfeit boarding passes. Read the rest of the story at BusinessTravelLogue