Booking earlier, wait-and-see mode: Travellers trying to get ahead of high costs

Aidan D'Souza usually starts planning international trips at least six months ahead of time. But now, he says that's not early enough to lock in lower prices.

For his upcoming trip in January, D'Souza started monitoring flight prices to Japan last month. 

"We started this a bit earlier because we're not too sure what could happen later on with ticket prices," he said. 

"They could go higher, things could change," he said. "That's why we started a bit earlier than six months, just to give us more time to plan for that."

Toronto teases with world’s second-biggest subterranean shopping complex

Manitoba boasts the world’s biggest snow maze. Ontario boasts one of the world’s biggest sub-snow mazes.

In a city known for structures that reach up and not down, Toronto’s “PATH” was until recently the world’s largest pedestrian subway network/underground shopping complex. Emphasis on “complex.” (PATH was surpassed for the Guinness World Record in 2023 by none other than Montreal’s RÉSO network, with over 32 kilometres of tunnels.)

The PATH links more than 75 downtown buildings and 1,200 businesses. About 200,000 people navigate it each weekday; on weekends, maybe 20.

Margie and I once tried to explore this improbable 30-km-long weatherproof walkway. Off Bay Street, a PATH sign pointed down some stairs. Another sign then pointed toward doors. We ended up in a parkade. And just gave up.

United Airlines raises bag fees amid rising fuel costs and introduces tiered premium fares

Most travelers flying with United Airlines will pay $10 more to check their luggage beginning on Friday, as higher jet fuel costs driven by the war in the Middle East push another major U.S. carrier to increase fees.

The first piece of checked luggage will now cost customers $45 on flights within the United States, Mexico, Canada and Latin America, according to United. A second bag will cost $55.

“This is the first time in two years the airline has raised bag fees,” United said in a statement.

Speaking to investors last month, United CEO Scott Kirby said the rising costs for jet fuel since the conflict began on Feb. 28 had already added roughly $400 million to operating costs. The CEOs for Delta Air Lines and American Airlines reported similar figures.

BC Ferries head says service remains reliable despite vessel disruptions

The president of BC Ferries is defending service levels after disruptions this week caused by two major vessels being taken out of service, but adds he plans to revisit a rejected request for a fifth new vessel to address capacity issues.

Nicolas Jimenez made the comments Thursday after the Spirit of Vancouver Island on the Tsawwassen—Swartz Bay route was knocked out of service on Tuesday with a generator problem that was supposed to have been fixed when it returned to service days before. 

The outage coincided with the Queen of Surrey on the Tsawwassen—Duke Point run also being taken out of service this week when refit work found additional problems that prevented its scheduled return, leading to cancellations and delays on both routes.

"While it may not feel like it, these kinds of significant impacts are rare," Jimenez said. "We operate our vessels at over-99-per-cent reliability, but we also know that on days like this, that's not what it feels like."

Family fighting to bring B.C. senior home after she fell into a coma in China

It was supposed to be a joyful family reunion, but instead a British Columbia grandmother is stranded in China in a coma, her family unable to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring her home via air ambulance.

Her family says Lilia Avoutova, 78, who is of mixed Chinese and Ukrainian heritage, arrived in Kunming on March 4.

But she and her 79-year-old husband, Savout, both from Burnaby, B.C., never made it to Avoutova's birthplace of Xinjiang, an autonomous territory in northwest China, after she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and stroke two days later.

Daughter Elena Lanteigne said her mother has been in an induced coma in a Kunming hospital since March 8. 

Bills to pay FAA and TSA workers during shutdowns get introduced but keep stalling in Congress

The Aviation Funding Solvency Act. The Keep America Flying Act. The Keep Air Travel Safe Act. The Aviation Funding Stability Act.

Again and again, members of Congress have dusted off the same idea: ensuring the federal employees who control air traffic and screen passengers and bags at U.S. airports get paid during government shutdowns.

Bills to make it happen keep getting introduced in one form or another, sometimes with Democrats and Republicans as co-sponsors. Yet session after session, the result has been the same — agencies receive their annual appropriations, public outrage over long security lines and flight delays fades, legislation languishes and workers have no guarantees their paychecks won't stop coming again.

“Once the crisis is over, people assume that the good times are back,” said Eric Chaffee, a Case Western Reserve law professor whose research includes risk management in the aviation industry. “It’s easy to pass the next big bill when you’re still in the throes of the financial crisis, but once the shutdown is done, people have a relatively short memory of the problems that it created.”

Frustrated travelers hear a new message from airports: Don’t get here so early

Maybe Dad was right about getting to the airport early. But it turns out there's still such a thing as TOO early.

Travelers panicked by scenes of never-ending lines at U.S. airport security checkpoints and frustrating tales of missed flights over the past few weeks are now showing up way before their departures. Some airports where the wait times have been manageable say those early birds are only adding to the misery — and in some cases causing other passengers to get to their gate too late.

In Ohio, John Glenn International Airport in Columbus is warning passengers against arriving hours in advance, even creating a chart showing when to show up: “90 minutes before departure is all you need.”

The airport says those premature arrivers — reacting to the funding standoff on Capitol Hill that’s creating crowded security checkpoints — are making things worse by creating bottlenecks during peak times.

Report finds beloved Alberta T. rex tourist draw has issues but far from extinct

A structural checkup on Tyra the Dinosaur has determined she's retaining water, has breathing issues, a fever and wrinkles — but is otherwise far from extinct.

The estimated medical bill for the 25-metre tourist attraction in Drumheller, Alta., is nothing to sneeze at: $154,000 to start with, and maintenance running in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in the years to follow.

“The World’s Largest Dinosaur remains structurally sound and safe for public use,” says the analysis and financial fix-up projections from an engineering firm hired at the request of the town and its chamber of commerce amid debate over the T. rex's fate.

Tyra, though, says the firm, has some issues, particularly with her fibreglass-metal “skin.”

Saving money on vacation doesn’t have to mean sacrificing fun: Here’s how to do it

Whether jet-setting overseas or embarking on an excursion closer to home, travel experts say there are many ways to save money on a holiday, without sacrificing the fun of it all.

Trump says he’ll sign order to pay TSA agents as Senate works into the night on funding deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday he would sign an order instructing the Homeland Security secretary to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration agents, while senators worked late into the night trying to end a budget impasse that has jammed airports and left workers without paychecks.

Trump announced his decision in a social media post saying he wanted to quickly stop the “Chaos at the Airports.”

With pressure mounting, the White House and senators, who have been engaged in on-again, off-again talks to resolve the stalemate over Department of Homeland Security funding, appeared to be narrowing in on a endgame in the final hours before TSA workers miss another paycheck Friday.

Trump’s order will pay TSA agents using money from his 2025 tax bill, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly. They compared the move to actions Trump took during a past shutdown to pay troops. The rationale is that Democrats have created an emergency by declining to approve funding, the official said.

ICE officers go to TSA checkpoints at Trump’s direction, while long wait times at airports persist

NEW YORK (AP) — Armed federal immigration officers in tactical gear moved through terminals at some of the busiest U.S. airports Monday, standing near security lines and checkpoints after President Donald Trump ordered their deployment during a partial government shutdown that has disrupted air travel nationwide.

The Trump administration said they would supplement Transportation Security Administration staffing at certain airports but provided few details about exactly what they would be doing. Still, after intensified immigration enforcement and protests in cities across the country over the past year, their presence has unsettled some travelers and raised new questions.

On Monday, Associated Press journalists observed Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and agents patrolling terminals and lingering near long lines of passengers at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International, John F. Kennedy International in New York, Newark Liberty International in New Jersey, George Bush Intercontinental in Houston and Louis Armstrong International outside New Orleans. A handful of other airports — including Phoenix's Sky Harbor International — also confirmed ICE would be on-site. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said his office was monitoring the deployment of federal officers at O’Hare International.

Federal law enforcement officers are a routine presence at international airports. Customs and Border Protection officers screen arriving passengers, and Homeland Security Investigations agents conduct criminal inquiries tied to cross-border activity. But immigration agents are rarely visible at TSA checkpoints, the front line of domestic air travel.

A trip through Burgundy on the trail of fine wines

Wine just happens to be grown in the most beautiful places in the world.

“I have noticed that,” said Margaux Laroche with a laugh.

She should know.

She is the seventh-generation owner and winemaker at Le Domaine d’Henri in Chablis, an appellation in France’s stunning and renowned Burgundy wine region.

Eby says he will sell B.C. as ‘stable jurisdiction’ during trade trip to China

VICTORIA - A trade delegation headed by British Columbia Premier David Eby will travel to China later this year in an effort to drum up business for the province.

The premier says the trip will focus on deepening trade relations around agriculture and energy, but he did not provide a timeline or other details. 

Eby's trip to China comes after Prime Minister Mark Carney visited the country in January, when he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and signed trade deals around Chinese-made EVs and Canadian canola. 

Eby says the mission to China will deliver the same message as his trip to India earlier this year, which is that B.C. is a "stable jurisdiction in a very unstable time." 

Iran threatens tourism sites and US sends more Marines to Middle East as Trump hints at wind-down

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Three weeks into an escalating war in the Middle East, Iran threatened to expand its retaliatory attacks to include recreational and tourist sites worldwide, as the U.S. announced it was sending more warships and Marines to the region.

Following news of the deployments, President Donald Trump said later Friday on social media that his administration in fact was considering “winding down” military operations in the region. The mixed messages came after another climb in oil prices plunged the U.S. stock market, and was followed by a Trump administration announcement that it will lift sanctions on Iranian oil loaded on ships, a move aimed at wrangling soaring fuel prices.

The war, meanwhile, has shown no signs of abating.

Israel said Iran continued to fire missiles at it early Saturday, while Saudi Arabia said it downed 20 drones in just a couple of hours in the country's eastern region, which is home to major oil installations. The defense ministry said there were no injuries or damage.

WestJet, Air Transat extend Cuba flight suspensions amid oil blockade

WestJet and Air Transat are extending their suspension of flights to Cuba, which was struggling with an island-wide blackout this week amid a ballooning energy crisis.

In an email, WestJet says most Cuba trips are cancelled through October, though two of its tour package divisions aim to start up again in June.

Air Transat says in a notice to travellers it plans to resume flights on June 20, with refunds available to affected passengers at both carriers.

Citing an ongoing fuel shortage, the airlines had announced last month they were cancelling all Cuba-bound voyages through at least late April — a particularly big setback for Transat, since Cuba accounts for eight per cent of its winter flight volume, according to aviation data firm Cirium.