Everyone knows that flights get delayed, canceled, moved, and now, airlines may also go bankrupt at a moment’s notice.

What’s the best way to make sure you aren’t caught with your pants down? Apparently the answer is to make sure you buy your tickets with a credit card.

What makes this different than a debit card, according to the New York Times, is that you can actually claim your money from the credit card company instead of from the airline:

Under the federal Fair Credit Billing Act, a credit card company is required to return your money for a service not supplied, like an airplane trip. Debit payment agencies are not.

In other words, by law, the credit card company can’t make you foot the bill for a canceled flight. This way they deal with the airline, and you keep your money and your time.

The New York Times has a recent story about how Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport is starting to roll out “enhanced customer service” to handle the massive numbers of travelers that stream through their hallways every year.

As more business travelers are getting stuck spending more time in airports, I think we’ll see a lot of American airports start to resemble the European “mallports” that seem to be all over the place.

Traditional fast food spots and magazine stands will probably continue to be supplemented with full service restaurants and clothing or accessories stores.

Enhanced customer service, like that practiced by Ms. Ellis, goes only so far. Airports have been adding amenities, too: more spas, massage centers, walk-in medical clinics, wine bars, lounges with showers, pet centers, art exhibitions, performances and free Wi-Fi. At Hartsfield, there are even places to buy stamps, mail a package and rent a cellphone.

As you know, free Wi-Fi sounds particularly interesting to me

When I fly, I usually show up to the airport REALLY early, so that I can get through security at whatever pace the line is moving on that particular day, and then spend the bulk of my time (hopefully) working at the gate. But I know a lot of people who are far less zen about their travel.

I was reading this piece in the New York Times about, roughly, how safe air travel really is.

The price of that safety is of course a combination of regulations (which have apparently been slack, lately) and travel security. I’m curious, as frequent business travelers, do you feel safer flying than you do traveling by other means? Do you think it’s worth the hassle of security?

Oblivion is such an attractive idea when you’re flying. Especially now that it looks like some airlines will start letting passengers use their cell phones on the plane.

Which is one of the reasons I was so sad when I broke my huge, ear-covering, audio-canceling Bose headphones last year. So far, I haven’t ponied up to replace them, but if I do, I might give this option a shot, spotted by Outside Online:

Here’s the deal: After a quick visit to an audiologist (included in the price), silicone casts of your inner ears will be on their way to becoming a new pair of nonpareil earphones that fit you and you alone. Turnaround time is about a week, and when you screw these rugged yet comfortable little numbers into your head, you’ll finally hear your tunes as the musicians and sound engineers intended.

Custom fitted headphones? Yes please. I can’t wear standard earbuds.

Obviously the correct answer is “free,” but let’s put that aside for a moment. According to C-Net, American Airlines and Virgin America are both going to be offering in-flight internet access to their travelers for somewhere between $10 and $13 per flight:

American Airlines will initially enable 15 of its 767s with broadband, and eventually it will offer Internet connectivity on 500 planes. Virgin plans to provide broadband on all its planes, according to a blog posted on GigaOm Tuesday.

The new service, called Gogo, will cost $12.95 for cross-country flights and $9.95 for flights lasting three hours or less.

As long as the service itself is fast enough to be productive, I don’t mind shelling out $10 for connectivity on a 2 1/2 hour flight. Especially if they manage to hook that deal in to any of the networks that cover airports - pay a fee at the terminal and it covers your in-flight wi-fi, too? Yeah, I’d probably do that.

Had a chance to sit down with airport guru Harriet Baskas today, and learned a lot about how airports are (or are not) catering to the needs of business travelers. One of the topics I wanted to get into with her about was the dearth of power outlets in most airports. I wanted to ask if any facilities have caught a clue and have installed ample power sources. Regrettably, we ran out of time.

Lo and behold in her current column in USA today she answers my question:

Travelers passing through Austin-Bergstrom International Airport have access to 900 electric outlets along the 24 gate concourse. In Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport there are currently 2,100 free power outlets, including those inside eight airline-club-inspired Samsung travel centers. More power is on its way.

According to the Telegraph.

The European Commission has apparently decided to approve the use of mobile phones and mobile phone equipment on planes in Europe, but most everything else is up to the airlines and the mobile phone carriers:

The final decision will be left to individual airlines, with Bmi, Ryanair and Portugal’s TAP planning to offer the service. Emirates and Air France have already launched trails [sic] on some routes.

However, not all airlines support the plans – Lufthansa have announced that it will not introduce the service. Surveys had shown that a large majority of customers were against it, said a spokesman for the German airline.

It’s not really a surprise to me that customers are unhappy with the addition of mobile phones to plane flights. Nobody wants to sit next to “that guy.”

Using solar powered luggage, this is completely possible.

Fortune Small Business wrote about various solar-powered luggage options available to travelers looking to spend about $150 to $250 on a messenger bag.

Their favorite option? Reware’s Juice Bag, which costs $170, and I snagged their picture for this post. It looks wonky to me, but hey, anything with solar panels designed by someone other than Jonathan Ive is unlikely to be very sexy.

The performance, unsurprisingly, was a bit mediocre on all bags. They’re probably worth more for geek points than they are for actual utility…especially indoors. Regardless, they are pretty good for geek points.

Not every business traveler is flying on a fat corporate account. For those of you running your own small business, or traveling on a fixed (small) budget, there are plenty of resources to help you snag the cheapest fare when you travel.

In the past, I’ve had pretty good luck just logging into Kayak and cruising the results, but there are a lot of options for the real deal-hunter.

Sally over at Travelhacker has compiled a pretty comprehensive list of the top 50 resources for finding cheap flights. I’ve never used many of them myself, but it never hurts to have options.

Last week there was an article in the New York Times about business travelers who found inspiration for their current work while on business trips. The idea is simple: who gets ideas when they sit in a drab little cubicle? People need external stimulation:

Creative inspiration often strikes at the most unexpected times — in the shower, while out for a walk or lying on the sofa — and with depressingly less frequency at the office when workers are actually paid to generate it. But business travel can be fertile ground for discovering creative ideas for work or even a new business, many travelers say.

While I don’t spend most of my time sitting in a cubicle, and while I do find a lot of airport architecture to be pretty amazing, business travel is not usually creative time for me.

Is it creative time for you?

Business 2.0 has an awesome piece up about how to mitigate, deal with, or beat various snags that will inevitably turn up in the schedule of any seasoned traveler.

Some of the tips are more obvious than others (like traveling with a wi-fi card instead of relying on hotspots), but some of the services, numbers, and tips are pretty original. For example:

There are no federal regulations governing how airlines should help passengers affected by delayed flights, so take matters into your own hands. Dial the airline’s customer service number while you’re in line to change your ticket; you might find an open seat before you reach the counter. Another option is to head to the frequent-flier lounge. Even if you’re not a member, you can buy a one-day pass and make use of the less harried lounge staff to rebook your trip.

Go poke through the whole article for the complete set of tricks.

Over at Macworld there is a great list of applications that come in handy for people who use their laptops as their main machines (yes, granted, they do mean Mac laptops).

When I bought my MacBook Pro just over a year ago, I moved all my work related stuff over from my desktop. Now my desktop is just for games and occasional heavy-lifting (some video processing, etc). I’m sure that many travelers road warriors also rely on their laptops as their primary or only computer.

Why does this matter? MacWorld explains:

You interact with a laptop in different ways (relying more on the keyboard and using a trackpad, for example), and you may use a laptop for different tasks. So the software needs of laptop users are different from those of their desktop counterparts.

If that sounds like you, go check out the list.

Remember when I told you about the TSA experiment to split the security lines by level of experience?

Peter Kim tweets about the practical result:

New Logan TSA expert line = full. Family line = empty. The real “experts” drop their ego and go through the faster line.

I remember reading an article by Douglas Adams that, he claimed, was composed in the bath tub on his PDA. The wave of the future, he said, as long as the keyboards got better.

I know that even using an iPhone or a Blackberry, my typing speed on anything smaller than a regular keyboard is reduced by a good 300%. What’s the solution? Laser keyboards, of course.

ThinkGeek has this Bluetooth Laser Keyboard, which can also makes clicking noises when you type with it, for $150. Not too shabby.

I’ve heard about these existing, and I’ve never used one (although if they sent me one to try out, I wouldn’t complain), but it does look freaking cool. If you’re looking for a productivity device that will make people ask if you’re from the future and you’ve come back in time to save Sarah Conner, this might be the one.

Milemaven is a Web site that lets you search for bonus mile promotions that are available based on the route you’re taking. I just checked it for a rather obscure flight to remote Idaho that I’m contemplating, and sure enough, no fewer than 8 bonuses on 2 different airlines were displayed.

These included (from Alaska Airlines…) Retain your MVP Status by Flying 4 Segments, Retain your MVP Gold Status by Flying 8 Segments, 1,000 Bonus Miles when Booking Online with Alaska Airlines Card, etc….

Remember when the TSA had their big snafu about not letting a MacBook Air through security?

The official guess from the TSA blog was that the MacBook probably didn’t make it through because it looked significantly different under an X-ray than any “normal” laptop. Screeners are trained to look for irregularities in objects, since that’s usually when something nefarious is going on.

It looks like the folks over at the blog recently got their hands on an actual MacBook Air and ran it through a machine to see if their theory was correct — it looks as though they were right.

The post comes complete with a video. If you’re curious, go check it out.

According to a recent article on Forbes.com, the Denver and Las Vegas airports owe their high placement in the “Wired Airports” rankings to their free wi-fi:

In an increasingly data-dense world, travelers will soon be able to surf the Web from the skies. Until then, however, the next best thing may be to fly out of Denver or Las Vegas: They represent two of fewer than 10 major airports around the world that offer free wi-fi Internet access throughout their public areas. That’s landed them at the top of Forbes.com’s first ranking of Wired Airports.

The fact that there are fewer than 10 major airports in the world that offer free wi-fi is kind of ridiculous.

Increasingly, that will change as cities and airports catch on to the fact that people (I have done this) will route their stopovers through airports where they CAN get online instead of where they can’t.

If I’m flying from SEA to LAX or BUR and I have to sop, I’ll stop in Vegas instead of San Francisco because I know that I can spend my layover online, for free.

Seriously, check out the picture to the right, snagged from one of DealMaker’s Road Warrior segments.

This is not from your favorite 1960’s Kubrick Classic. This is an actual first-class airport lounge in Sydney, Australia. And you want to talk about luxury? Listen to the description:

The lounge boasts entertainment areas with plasma TVs and a leather-floored library stocked with newspapers and magazines. A captive could play dominoes with those just passing through, or fire up a PlayStation. Wherever you are, the staff will fetch your drinks (gratis, naturally) from two fully stocked bars.

It features a restaurant with a celebrity chef (Neil Perry), leather chairs, floor to ceiling windows, options for massages, etc, etc, and so on.

The next time I fly First Class, I’m totally making a stopover in Australia.

David Willaims, at least, calls it “flight induced brain drain,” and when he says it he means something slightly different than the definition listed in Wikipedia.

The New York Times briefly chronicled his mental meanderings the other day, where he wonders what has happened to the brains of normally intelligent, frequently lonely people:

Recently, while I was waiting to board a flight to Los Angeles, I noticed a young professional man stealing glances at a young professional woman every time he could peel his eyes away from his BlackBerry.

As luck would have it, the woman, also an avid BlackBerry user, was seated next to me on the plane. So I stepped in, hoping to save the day, by offering my seat to this fellow. He accepted my offer, but then was too scared to mumble a “hello” during the entire three-hour flight.

It was unbelievable. I gave up my seat, gave him a shot and he didn’t make the most of it. What was he thinking? He could have at least said, “Nice BlackBerry.”

I guess the lesson here is: productivity on a flight doesn’t always mean hitting the keys. Spare your brain some grueling work-work, and spend some time talking to the people around you, or at least paying attention to what’s going on.

Maybe you’ll end up a little bit sharper at the end of the flight.

In case you’ve missed it over the past few days, the TSA had a bit of a PR snafu when they prevented Michael Nygard from catching his plane because he was carrying a MacBook Air.

It ended up all over the blogosphere (as you would expect) rather quickly.

Over at Blog Business Summit I called on the TSA to respond on their own blog, which they finally did yesterday (and I’m sure they did it just because I asked them to).

The upshot? That TSO’s (the people working the X-ray machine) are trained to look for irregularities. Given that the MacBook Air with a solid state drive X-rays like practically no other laptop, it’s not surprising that it would cause some surprises.

Go read their post for the full response.