Baggage

Several flights were delayed at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport Sunday morning when a false fire alarm automatically shut down the baggage area for Southwest Airlines, one of the airport's largest carriers, officials said. While authorities ultimately determined there was no fire on the conveyor belt system that transports baggage, the delay from the alarm and investigation caused some complications for travelers during the busy year-end holiday season. "It did cause a little bit of the delay.

As you shop for airfare for your summer vacation, don't overlook the cost of fees for bags or changing a reservation that can add quite a bit to your travel bill. Airlines collected a record $6.1 billion last year in these fees, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That could be because fees are rising as well as more people are flying, said George Hobica, founder of Airfarewatchdog.com, which publishes a list of airline charges. Fees continue to rise this year, with some airlines recently increasing the cost to change a reservation from $150 to $200.

I read Kenneth J. Mercer's letter to the editor about charging for carryon luggage ("Cardin oversteps on carry-on luggage," Readers respond, April 16) and couldn't believe what I was reading. It is over the top what the airlines charge for tickets. We already pay for checked luggage. But the point of charging for carry-on luggage goes one step too far. It is usually not possible to pick another airline that will go to where you want to go. The people who drag everything they own onto the plane to avoid the baggage charges hold up the getting on and getting off the plane and think that they are avoiding the baggage check.

Several flights were delayed at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport Sunday morning when a false fire alarm automatically shut down the baggage area for Southwest Airlines, one of the airport's largest carriers, officials said. While authorities ultimately determined there was no fire on the conveyor belt system that transports baggage, the delay from the alarm and investigation caused some complications for travelers during the busy year-end holiday season. "It did cause a little bit of the delay.

WASHINGTON - The federal Transportation Security Administration is sending $1.7 million to the Maryland Aviation Administration for improvements to the checked-baggage screening system at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, officials said yesterday. The money is to be used for additional explosives-detection machines in the American Airlines baggage-handling area and for improvements in the Northwest and Continental Airlines baggage rooms. "This money will allow BWI to create a permanent checked-baggage solution that will increase the pace of screening, reduce congestion in the lobby and streamline the process," said Rear Adm. David M. Stone, assistant secretary of homeland security for the TSA. The agency has announced similar grants totaling $77.9 million for airports in San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and elsewhere.

LONDON -- Tighter baggage checks at Frankfurt and Heathrow airports could have prevented the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, the official disaster inquiry ruled yesterday.The 270 deaths from the bombing could have been avoided if more stringent efforts had been made to match bags to passengers traveling on the London-to-New York jetliner, said Sheriff-Principal John Mowat, who headed the probe.Reliance in Germany and Britain on X-ray checks of baggage alone was "a defect" in security, but the primary cause of the deaths was "a criminal act of murder," the report said.

We're flying to Rome. American Airlines has booked us on British Airways from London to Rome. Will we be restricted to one checked bag according to the latter airline's rules? If your flights have the same record locator, you'll be allowed to travel under American Airlines' international baggage allowance: two checked bags per passenger up to 50 pounds each. This is because British Airways, a code-share partner with American, has agreed to give passengers a more generous baggage allowance on connecting flights.

In November, my wife and I flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles on United Airlines. At the ticket kiosk, an agent advised us to check our carry-ons because the bins over our last-row seats were filled with emergency equipment. We agreed. When we got home, I unpacked my bag and discovered that a new $1,800 laptop had disappeared. The Transportation Security Agency said it didn't open the luggage. United sent a form letter, denying responsibility. Do I have any recourse? Many travelers think, incorrectly, that Department of Transportation rules cover them for all losses.

State aviation officials have tentatively hired a contractor to build a new baggage system at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport that could allow AirTran Airways, the airport's second leading carrier, to double its daily departures. The two-year, $32 million project at Terminal D would begin later this spring if approved by the state Board of Public Works. It would triple both the size of the baggage screening area and the rate at which bags are processed as creaky conveyor belts are replaced, BWI spokesman Jonathan Dean said.

WASHINGTON - A commuter plane that crashed on takeoff from Charlotte, N.C., in January was 400 to 1,000 pounds overweight, and two bags in its tail baggage compartment were so heavy that it took two handlers to carry each of them, a sign that the plane was tail-heavy as well, people involved in the investigation said. But government investigators said the flight would probably have proceeded without incident if not for a maintenance error two days before, which they said they believed left the pilots unable to get full motion out of the mechanism that raises the tail and lowers the nose.

The Republican Party has been doing a lot of hand-wringing and finger-pointing since the presidential election. Half the conservative columnists and bloggers say the GOP lost because it overemphasized social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. The other half says the party didn't emphasize them enough. And everyone denounces Project ORCA, the campaign's attempt to turn out voters via technology. But I've got a suggestion for cutting short the GOP angst: Sarah Palin for president in 2016.

So racing returns to downtown streets today, as the Grand Prix of Baltimore takes over the Inner Harbor and Camden Yards through Sunday. The new organizers of the revived racing festival have managed to avoid the tempest over tree removal that dogged the runup to last year's inaugural event.  But they've also dropped any pretense of reducing or mitigating the noise, unfiltered racecar exhaust and other environmental impacts of the extravaganza....

Delta Air Lines is on the move at BWI-Marshall Airport, the latest in a series of changes as the airport prepares for an expansion project in 2012. Beginning next week, Delta will shift its operations from Concourse C to Concourse D. As you may remember, AirTran was most recently based at Concourse D but last month it shifted to be closer to owner Southwest Airlines in the A/B Concourse. Yes, it's musical chairs, folks. With a little alphabet soup thrown in. But when the music stops sometime in 2013, BWI expects to have created a more passenger-friendly airport that's easier to navigate.

This is what Fox Sports pays Brian Billick to do -- and he does it as well as anyone in any TV booth on the NFL. Near the end of the third quarter with momentum back on their side, the Ravens were driving down the field, and they were doing it by throwing to Anquan Boldin down the sideline at will. As the Ravens quickly lined up in their no-huddle offense after another completion to Boldin, Billick said what the Cardinals needed to do immediately was switch rookie cornerback Patrick Peterson into man-on-man coverage on Boldin -- no matter where the Ravens receiver lined up on the field.

It was the song "Greensleeves" that drew Shirley Dempsey-Kahn into the Goodwill store that December morning. It reminded her of her first trip to London as a child, with her father, a naval officer, and her mother. She would be returning in January, and she thought to buy herself an extra piece of luggage. The kind with a handle and wheels and an expandable compartment. The kind of suitcase flight attendants favor. In a jumble of luggage in the corner of the store, she found exactly what she wanted: a nearly new Travel Pro carry-on bag. It cost only $8, plus tax. She couldn't believe her luck.

Last year when CNN was talking about hiring Eliot Spitzer and Piers Morgan, I expressed my dismay at the way in which both could harm the credibility that the channel had steadfastly built through its journalism. Spitzer did prove to be an embarrassment when CNN tried to cover political sex scandals tbis year, and he is now gone for a variety of reasons, thank goodness. And now, just as I was becoming reconciled to accepting Morgan as the price I had to pay for all the sound journalism and analysis otherwise on CNN, comes Rupert Murdoch's News of the World scandal with its revelations of despicable phone hacking -- a scandal that threatens to shine a very bright light on Morgan's career as a UK tabloid editor.

He should have known better. Of all the players in the NBA - the most disproportionately maligned league in the land, and at the same time a league that keeps on asking for it - Carmelo Anthony should have known better. After all, he keeps asking for it, too. So, no, all things considered, 15 games for his role in the melee at New York's Madison Square Garden on Saturday is not too much. Now the NBA and Anthony can keep living their twin existences, both to be judged more harshly for every bad act forever more because of something that tainted their reputations years earlier - yet continuing to bring that judgment on themselves when you'd least expect.

The only airline baggage rule that many of us could comprehend is up in the air. The firm "one-plus-one" limit -- one carry-on bag plus one personal item -- that the Federal Aviation Administration established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is not so firm anymore. It's not even clear who is enforcing it. Some airlines say it's the FAA. The FAA says it's the Transportation Security Administration, and the TSA says it's the airlines. That could leave passengers holding the bag. I encountered this regulatory turbulence while trying to track down a revision to carry-on rules that the TSA quietly posted on its Web site, www.tsa.

UPDATED YET AGAIN: We removed the video player after it was taken down by the user. UPDATED AGAIN: Starting immediately, Delta has changed its military baggage policies to permit active military and their dependents traveling with them on military orders to check five bags free in first and business class and four bags in coach. They will be allowed four bags on Delta Connection flights. The airline is also working individually with the servicemen and women who stated in the video below that they had to pay $200 each to check a fourth bag. Original post: Delta Airlines charged members of aU.S.