At the moment, much of New York and New Jersey is dealing with an air quality crisis, owing to more than 400 Canadian wildfires. Authorities have urged people to limit their outside exposure, flights have been delayed or canceled outright, Broadway shows have been canceled and social media is filled with eerie screen shots of yellow skies and words of encouragement (or otherwise) from West Coast residents who have been living with with rolling ecological disasters for the past decade. Don’t...

An expert explains why the Southwest meltdown was predictable, and what that really means for the industry. Southwest's holiday meltdown, in which more than more than 16,700 flights were cancelled or delayed, was frustrating and harrowing for customers, and embarrassing for the airline. It was also completely predictable. Many aviation experts, including Dan Gellert, Chief Operating Officer at the online travel agency Skiplagged, saw a breakdown like this coming. If anything, it was really...

Airlines including Southwest and American have been struggling with finding enough pilots to staff all their flights. Whenever the economy gets rocky, the natural inclination is for people to tighten their belts and look at what they need to spend less money on. Sometimes that means no more dinners at fancy restaurants for a while or putting off getting a new car for a year. It’s not the most enjoyable thing for a household to do, but sometimes it can’t be helped. But you have to be...

Even in the best of circumstances, traveling during the holidays is crowded, unpleasant and expensive, and these are hardly the best of circumstances. Due to the pandemic and supply chain issues, flights and cancellations are more common than ever. And renewed covid outbreaks have left planes without enough crew members. But the main problem is that a number of pilots took a buyout or chose to retire early, and when travel started picking up again in 2021, many airlines found themselves...

It’s a conundrum, isn’t it? You’d like your place to feel cleaner, but you’re also too lazy to vacuum. What to do? For one thing, you could “hire” a robot vacuum that will take away the tiresome chore of actually moving your vacuum around. Now, robot vacuums aren’t perfect. They sometimes don’t quite get to those hard-to-reach places that only a human touch can take care of. Also, you’re not entirely off the hook for physical labor, as you’re going to need to remove cords you have lying...