With the New Year ringing in, BAA and Virgin Atlantic Airline workers plan to check out with a series of strikes that could stall flights and ground planes throughout January. In a maddening on-again off-again, today-you-fly-but-tomorrow-you-don’t sort of way, UK business travelers will face shutdowns at BAA’s seven airports: Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Southampton, with strikes planned for 24 hours on January 7 and January 14, and 48 hours on January 17.

We’ve heard reports that BAA has begun training hundreds of senior management to screen passengers if Unite Union’s fire crews, maintenance workers and clerical and security staff strike as expected. While we relish the idea of everyone rolling up their sleeves, security and trained fire crews sound terribly important.

At the same time, Virgin Atlantic faces industrial action, with its cabin crews expected to strike on Jan. 9, 10, 16 and 17. The airline says it will be just fine, but has already cancelled a number of flights to and from London, and more cancellations are expected.

At the very least, queues will be slow, but it’s more likely that travelers will be stranded— in dirty airports. Suddenly, business premier through the Chunnel and under the sea sounds completely reasonable.

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How did we survive without the Internet?

One minute you can secure a great recipe and fine cooking demonstration for figgy pudding, and the next you can access the wait times for security checkpoints at the nation’s airports. (Either way the information is tasty.)

By making available the historical wait times (average and maximum) for security lines at U.S. Airports, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is working to keep you better informed when planning travel.

Take a look at your airport’s security checkpoint historical wait times.

In this season of travel tips, I also offer up the following informational links for your consideration:

FAA: Airport and system flight delay information 

TSA travel security tips: packing food and gift items

TSA travel security tips: permitted and prohibited items

TSA travel security tips: 3-1-1 for carryons (liquids and gels)

FlightStats: Fly Smarter: This is a great site, comprehensive in its compilation of information about flight status, airport information, flight tracking, historical flight reports and as they say, a whole lot more.

Seat Guru: All planes are not created equal and seat guru can take you on an overhead tour of the cabin and a view of what's in store on what row and what amenities to expect on each airline.

Tripadvisor is my best traveling friend and confidant. I never book a hotel without first checking in with Tripadvisor for a first, second and third opinion. 

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Airline food is as much fodder for the comic as fare for the traveler and even though meals have all but disappeared on most domestic flights, we still like to torture the flight attendant with that simple albeit loaded question, “What's for dinner?”

I should know better by now and just pack along provisions for survival, which for me would be power bars and Altoids. As for my other fair travelers I offer a tip, a helpful site to visit before you considered lugging a larder of Scooby Snacks through security: AirlineMeals.net.

The site is, well, delicious, chockablock with images of airline meals from around the globe and around the block. You can see what you're missing in business or first class or marvel at the art-like forms of many entrees, springing to life through the camera lens of a hungry (or not so hungry) traveler. 

Browse meals photos by airline, but be warned it's a lot like eating potato chips; you can rarely stop at one. And when it comes to garnering the most photos, Singapore Airlines fries the competition with 1243 photos of in-flight fare. Take a look at What's for Dinner? on your next flight.

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SAS unions have not been happy with proposals to sell the airline’s Ground Services, Technical Services and cargo handling units, and will likely call for a strike as soon as the decision is officially made.  Swedish media report the formal announcement will be made in January, with SAS holding out until after the close of holiday travel.

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Michele Higgins, Practical Traveler Columnist for The New York Times wrote an article in the newspaper's Travel section entitled "Aboard Planes, Class Conflict", analyzing the current state of affairs on the nation's airlines. It apparently hit a nerve and readers responded with their own insights, laments and tales of travel horror. Check out the fray or add your two cents:

Passengers Speak Up: The Views from the Back of the Plane

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Checking In With Good In-Flight Manners

I grew up in a family where manners shared a level of importance commensurate with impeccable dental hygiene and unwavering fiscal responsibility. Sentences devoid of "yes ma'am" or "yes sir" fell on deaf ears. "Please" and "thank you" were cemented to each request and acknowledgement, respectively.

Failure to send a thank you note was considered valid proof that you truly had been raised by wolves; and interrupting someone mid-sentence was punishable by an arched eyebrow and spirited rebuke on the drive home.

Amazingly, I survived Camp Decorum and for the most part became a better man for it (or so says my mother). Perhaps my biggest adjustment growing up was realizing that manners are a personal choice not shared by all.

When it comes to airline travel, I often wonder if some of my fellow passengers hitched a ride to the airport on a turnip truck, seemingly oblivious to the ways of playing well with others.

This week, my friend and VIP corporate travel agent supreme, Julie Ellin, gave me renewed hope via email. She wanted to know if I had heard of a program Delta Air Lines was introducing called Planeguage. (No ma'am, it was news to me.)

I read with interest that Delta had produced a series of animated videos for their blog, showcasing some oafish onboard behavior. Each offering was basically a gentle nudge or thinly-veiled lesson on how not to act (that is, just in case one's wolf pack didn't have access to cable or an inclination to socialize.)

So far there are five videos, including Shady Lady, Lav Dance and Kidtastrophe. The hope in releasing these videos is that some viewers will have an epiphany and spring to their feet with newfound awareness that kicking someone's seatback is a no-no or fighting for armrest supremacy is uncivilized behavior. (We can all dream, can't we?)

So far I have not seen myself in any of the animated videos, but I'll keep checking future releases just to make sure.

Take a look for yourself at Planeguage.

You may also want to check it out a video report on AP Live News.

What subject would you like to see addressed on Planeguage?

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December 13 will be the day of reckoning for Alitalia, with the Italian government expected to decide whether the troubled national airline should go to AP Holding or Air France/KLM.

Unions are already angry about both companies' reorganization proposals and they’ve planned a series of strikes for Dec. 14th that will cause flight delays and cancellations throughout the country. If the airline bid goes to Air France, which has been clear about the need for cutbacks, Fridays’ strike will be the first in a long line of protests.

Alitalia Chairman Maurizio Prato supports selling the country’s 49.9% stake to Air France, calling the decision good for the airline and good for the country. Good for business, but we say bad for business travelers.

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 Take the Traveler IQ Challenge

When it came to grade school geography, I was the kid armed raised, propped high by the other arm, grunting “oh, oh, oh, I know, I know.” For some strange reason my earnest exuberance to show off all that I knew about the lands of the world was, well, dismissed and found tiresome by the likes of Miss Greene, Miss Love and Miss Robertson, teachers who oddly had little interest in knowing that Vatican City is the smallest country in the world or that Helsinki is the capital of Finland.  

This week, my love of geography and faraway places found a new diversion, thanks to the errant online wanderings of our always-in-the-know marketing director, Eric Heller.   I feared for my productivity and that Eric had stumbled on another online gem, upon hearing those enticing words spill from his office door, “Hey you’ve got to check out this site.” Like Ulysses drawn to the rocks by the siren’s call, I fell for it, “What site?” Hopefully, the janatorial staff wouldn't find my  mummified, cobweb-covered body months later hunched over the keyboard, monitor in mid-game of Traveler IQ Challenge.  

The site centers around an unmarked map of the world (or geographic region of your choosing) with visible borders. The game starts when you are shown the name of a place, city, landmark or capital. You’re job is to find the place and click your mouse on the part of the map where you think it is located. A green arrow then appears marking the correct location, and formulates the distance between the reality and your guess. The farther off the mark, the more points you are charged. I was only off 57 km for Westminster Abbey and an embarrassing 1267 km for the Kremlin. My third grade self would have lowered his head and raised arm in shame and moved on to his math assignment, unaware that time heals all wrong answers.

Take the Traveler IQ Challenge.

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The face of drunk driving isn't pretty and the proof is in the Web site StopDuisAZ.com. The Web site, brainchild Maricopa County attorney Andrew Thomas, posts mugshots of convicted drunk drivers, along with sentencing information. Drunk drivers in Gilbert, Glendale, Peoria, Scottsdale, and Tempe, Arizona face a harsh reality: world wide exposure on the Web.

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In an attempt to provide more daylight for school children and thumb their noses at most of the world’s hourly schedule, Venezuelans roll their clocks back 30 minutes the morning of Dec. 9th.

Travelers flying to, from or through Venezuela should be alerted that the country now will have its own time zone, VET, -4:30 GMT. Airlines will undoubtedly make the necessary changes, but we advise any travelers to confirm all reservation times, with an emphasis on making connections.

Left-wing President Hugo Chavez, who has changed the name of the country, the flag and its coat of arms, and recently made an unsuccessful bid to be president-elect-forever-more, says the time-zone change provides  "more fair distribution of the sunrise."  

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Naughty or nice is beside the point— unions know that strikes during the holiday season hit the travel industry’s life blood. Rumbles of industrial actions have increased from all corners of the world, with most of the buzz likely little more than leverage prior to negotiations.

Having said that, we’re keeping a close eye on the UK and its major airport operator, BAA. Employees of   the mammoth BAA, which owns seven UK airports: Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Southampton, could strike as soon as Dec. 27th.

Mix in a likely strike by Virgin Atlantic cabin crew members in early January, and UK business travelers could face weeks of flight chaos.

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