TULSA — The woman in the wheelchair and headphones is watching pictures go by and hearing a narrator speak about a place and a moment long ago.
During a recent week when all of America was focused on the Boston marathon bombing, and later the flight delays caused by the sequester, a major travel event occurred that got almost no attention: United Airlines raised the fee for changing an air ticket to $200. A family of four planning to fly on June 16, for instance, which then encounters an emergency requiring they fly four days later, will be charged $800 for the right to do so. The increase amounted to a full 33 percent, lifting a former penalty of $150 for changing a ticket, to $200.
Q: I’m trying to help my sister get a refund on her daughter’s nonrefundable airline ticket. Her daughter went to Spain in January as an exchange student. Her return was scheduled for May 29.
When I was 18, I wrote a postcard to my grandmother from Austria, describing how I slept for free on the porch of a hostel in Innsbruck. While I wouldn’t do that now, it’s fun to reminisce about my backpacking days. Back then, bars were inundated with smoke, currency changes were required after each border crossing, and it took about nine hours to travel from London to Paris. Yet despite the changes, the adventure and thrills of good old-fashioned vagabonding survive.
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