News and Deals: October 15, 2012 - Kenya coast tourist numbers fall on Islamist security fears, À la carte fees add up for travelers, American Airlines installs new latch on seats and Space jump creates collective moment

Kenya coast tourist numbers fall on Islamist security fears
Chicago Tribune

The number of tourists visiting Kenya’s coast fell by 22 percent in the first eight months of this year compared to 2011 due to concerns over Islamist violence and the cost of landing rights in the traditional tourist hot spot, tour operators said.

Alongside tea and horticulture, tourism is one of Kenya’s major foreign currency earners and raked in 98 billion shillings ($1.18 billion) last year, just shy of its 100 billion shilling target, and up from 74 billion shillings in 2010.

À la carte fees add up for travelers
USA TODAY

Airlines aren’t the only ones in the travel industry that are charging fees for services and products that once were free. Hotels, rental car firms and cruise ships are joining in.

It seemed like a great deal at the time.

Morgiana Celestine-Lewis and her cousin Angie Taylor had scored a room at the Westin near Los Angeles International Airport for $124 the first night. As part of a birth-year promotion, they paid $73 the second night because Taylor’s birth year is 1973.

When they got the bill at checkout, they found a $25-a-night fee for parking plus a $2.50 parking tax, charges they say the hotel did not disclose when they booked online. Parking their car for two nights came at a cost approaching that of parking themselves in a room for a second night.
“Had we known about all the extra fees and insane parking costs, we would have stayed elsewhere,” says Celestine-Lewis, a book publisher in Oakland.

American Airlines installs new latch on seats
L.A. Biz

American Airlines is planning to add a secondary locking device to the seats of some Boeing 767 airplanes in the aftermath of seats coming loose on a few Boeing 757 flights.

A report by the Dallas Business Journal says the new device is being added after American canceled nearly 100 flights in early October to inspect and fix seats on 48 Boeing 757 aircraft. The work was in response to in-flight incidents in which rows of seats came loose.

Space jump creates collective moment
News24

Felix Baumgartner stood alone at the edge of space, poised in the open doorway of a capsule suspended above Earth and wondering if he would make it back alive. 39 kilometres below him, millions of people were right there with him, watching on the Internet and marveling at the wonder of the moment.

A second later, he stepped off the capsule and barreled toward the New Mexico desert as a tiny white speck against a darkly-tinted sky. Millions watched him breathlessly as he shattered the sound barrier and then landed safely about nine minutes later, becoming the world’s first supersonic skydiver.

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