Passengers

Whether by necessity or choice, a quarter of Americans take at least one vacation by themselves each year. Some solo travelers are single. Some have partners who dislike travel or have different interests or can't get away. Some just crave freedom. But all face the same question: What's the best trip for the person traveling alone? "The key is to know yourself," said Beth Whitman, author of a guide for women traveling alone and founder of Wanderlustandlipstick.com , a website devoted to advice and tours for women on the go. "There are times when you just need to get away, to recuperate.

Most of us will put up with a cramped middle seat on a short flight. But on trips more than three hours long, we are ready to crack open our wallets and pay for a window or aisle seat. That is one of the findings of a recent Harris Interactive poll of 2,276 adults on the subject of airline pet peeves and passenger fees. On flights shorter than two hours, 33% of those surveyed said they would pay for extra legroom. If the flight lasts more than three hours, 58% said they would be willing to pay. Thirteen percent said they'd pay more than $25. But even if fliers are willing to pay the fees, they won't necessarily be happy about it. Creed Mamikunian, a doctor from Anchorage, describes all airline fees as ridiculous and offensive.

Behind the wheel of his tour bus, Don Baisa prays. Please. Give me George Clooney today, he thinks as tourists scramble aboard the 12-seat, open-top van marked "City Tours!" Or Charlize Theron. Or Jennifer Aniston. Will Ferrell. He'd take Will Ferrell. Baisa, a 61-year-old veteran of the tour bus scene with a neatly groomed, salt-and-pepper mustache, knows what his passengers want during their two-hour journey through Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Spotting stars means big tips.

Grouse all you want about airline baggage fees, but the numbers don't lie: You are slowly learning to accept them as a painful but necessary part of the flying experience. In fact, the overall satisfaction with air travel has increased to the highest level since 2006, according to the J.D. Power & Associates airline satisfaction study for 2013. On a 1,000-point scale, satisfaction with airlines reached 695 points, up 14 points from 2012, according to the survey of more than 11,800 airline passengers.

If you've had a laptop computer lost or damaged during security screening at Los Angeles International Airport, you are not alone. Laptop computers are the item most often listed as lost or damaged in claim reports filed against the Transportation Security Administration at LAX, according to an analysis of TSA records. In a three-year period, passengers at LAX filed 1,702 claims, second only to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, with 2,277 claims, according to the records for November 2007 to December 2010.

The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday issued a series of new safety recommendations based on lessons from the landing of a US Airways plane in the Hudson River last year. Though the board applauded the skill of the flight crew, it said there were problems that could have turned the incident into a tragedy. The Airbus A320 was equipped with inflatable life vests, lifelines and slide rafts, which officials said were crucial to passengers' safe escape.

The Transportation Security Administration is removing controversial full-body scanners made by a Torrance manufacturer, winning praise from privacy advocates and passenger-rights groups that raised questions about the health effects of the devices. Rapiscan, a unit of OSI Systems Inc., manufactured about 200 full-body scanners used by the TSA to screen passengers for hidden weapons at airports across the country. The machines generated a storm of protest because the devices use low levels of radiation to create what resembles a nude image of screened passengers.

New rules on delayed flights Under a directive announced by the Transportation Department, starting in April domestic airlines must: Allow passengers to return to the terminal if they have been stranded on the tarmac for more than three hours. The only exceptions are if safety or security reasons prohibit the plane from returning to the gate or if air traffic controllers advise against it. Provide food and water and access to a working bathroom after a plane has been delayed for more than two hours.

When teensy-weensy Samoa Airlines debuted its pay-by-the-kilo policy in January, I doubt it expected to set off an international controversy about fat discrimination. But that's what happened when news seeped out this week after the airline's chief executive, Chris Langton, told ABC News radio in Australia that the system is not only fair but destined to catch on. “Doesn't matter whether you're carrying freight or people,” explained Langton. "We've amalgamated the two and worked out a figure per kilo.” Samoa Air, he added, has always weighed the human and non-human cargo it carries.

Let them eat cake, says Korean Air. The Seoul-based airline hopes to sweeten the flying experience by offering free cake and cupcakes to passengers who are celebrating a wedding, honeymoon, birthday or some other special occasion during a flight. The cake service has been offered for months to passengers in Asian markets, and Korean Air recently began promoting the complimentary pastries to U.S. passengers. To get the onboard goodies, passengers must call a Korean Air agent at (800)

NEW DELHI - At least 58 people were missing and feared dead Tuesday after a boat capsized off Myanmar while residents tried to flee an approaching cyclone, United Nations officials said. The boat was carrying about 100 Rohingya Muslims, many of whom lived in camps in low-lying areas to escape Buddhist-Muslim violence, officials said. The boat apparently ran into rocks off Pauktaw township in the western state Rakhine and sank late Monday as people were evacuating, said Aye Win, spokesman for the U.N. Information Center in Myanmar, based on preliminary information.

President Obama recently groused that no U.S. airport ranked among the world's top 25 airports. If you're a regular traveler to Los Angeles, you may be even more disappointed to learn that Los Angeles International Airport didn't even make the top 100. Obama was referring to a ranking released in April - the Skytrax World Airport Awards - that is based on a survey of 12.1 million travelers around the world. Out of 395 airports worldwide, LAX ranked 109th overall and 24th among 50 airports in North America.

SAN FRANCISCO - The night started out on a high note with nine women, including a newlywed, out celebrating Saturday in the Bay Area. A limousine driver with LimoStop Inc. picked up the women in Oakland and was going to drop them off about 40 miles away at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Foster City. But as the white 1999 Lincoln Town Car crossed the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, the passengers noticed smoke coming from the back of the vehicle, said San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault.

Re "Move the runway already," Editorial, April 28 The Times' nonsensical editorial advocating moving the northernmost runway at Los Angeles International Airport 260 feet closer to Westchester gives no cogent reasons for its position. The message is "just do it. " History? It doesn't matter to The Times that in the late 1960s and early '70s, Westchester lost much of its downtown and thousands of homes and residents to LAX expansion. Also unmentioned is the onetime official plan to develop the "Palmdale Intercontinental Airport" after LAX reached 40 million annual passengers (it served more than 60 million last year)

A.S. King won the L.A. Times book prize for young adult literature with "Ask the Passengers" on Friday night. Wearing the same high green boots Saturday morning, she stopped by our video booth at the L.A. Times Festival of Books to talk with features editor Alice Short about the inspiration for her young adult novel. "'Ask the Passengers' was born out of 25 years of thinking about being a questioning teenager. It also was born of a habit I've had since I was a very young girl. I used to lay in my backyard -- my yard was in the middle of a cornfield -- so I would lie there in the afternoon and watch the airplanes fly overhead," King says.

Our cruise to Hawaii on the Celebrity Millennium began with saying goodbye to our ship docked in San Diego Harbor and taking a  bus ride to Ensenada, Mexico , to meet it again. An act of Congress made it illegal for us to board our Malta-flagged ship in the United States because our destination was another U.S. port.  The Jones Act, a 1920 maritime law, is commonly blamed for prohibiting foreign-flagged vessels from carrying passengers between two U.S. ports, without calling at a distant foreign port along the way. The restriction on transporting passengers actually originated from an 1886 law that is now called Chapter 551, Coastwise Trade of Title 46, Shipping, United States Code.

In the first such fine of an international carrier, the U.S. Department of Transportation has issued a $150,000 fine against Pakistan International Airlines for stranding passengers in Washington for more than four hours. Under federal rules, domestic airlines are prohibited from keeping passengers stranded on a grounded flight for more than three hours without allowing them to return to the terminal. On international flights, the limit is four hours. Airlines that violate the rules can be fined up to $27,500 per passenger.

Robert Knisely, a Transportation Department official, told a congressional panel today that passengers, not the federal aviation trust fund, should pay for better aviation security.

Nearly a week after a computer glitch grounded hundreds of its planes, American Airlines has yet to disclose the exact cause of the problem that frustrated passengers stuck in crowded terminals across the country. American's chief executive, Tom Horton, would say in a video apology only that "we had a software issue that impacted both our primary and backup systems. " But as airline computer systems become more interactive and complicated, computer experts warn that outages may become more common if airlines do not regularly test and maintain their systems.

You won't be taking your Swiss Army knife onto the plane with you on Thursday after all. In a surprise delay, John Pistole, head of the Transportation Security Administration, said a change that would allow passengers to carry on small knives and some other formerly banned items (hockey sticks, golf clubs) had been delayed. The rule change was to have gone into effect on Thursday. A TSA spokesperson on Monday wrote in an email: "In order to accommodate further input from the Aviation Security Advisory Committee (ASAC)