Hurricane Rita and Continental Airline

The last part of my trip involved a flight from Las Vegas to Houston on Thursday 22 Sep, and a flight from Houston to London on the evening of Saturday 24 Sep. By Tuesday, it was becoming clear that Hurricane Rita stood a strong chance of hitting Houston on Saturday morning, so it didn’t look like a good place to be going to.

I phoned Continental on Tuesday, but they said that as they hadn’t issued a weather alert for Houston, they were unable to re-route my flight; if they were to issue one later in the week (i.e. once I was already in Houston) then we’d have to sort something out at that point. I suggested that it probably wasn’t too wise under the circumstances for me to be flying in to Houston on Thursday, only to be evacuated later. But they still couldn’t do anything.

On Wednesday, I phoned Expedia (with whom I’d booked all the flights). They said that they couldn’t do anything, as (just as I’d found) Continental hadn’t issued an alert for Houston yet, so theoretically I should be fine to fly from Houston on Saturday. Ironically, at exactly the time they were saying this, the mayor of Houston was speaking live on TV urging residents to evacuate!

After this point, neither I nor Expedia were able to raise Continental at all; not even hold music. In desperation, I went on to the Expedia site and booked a flight from Las Vegas to Bristol (England) on Thursday. Cost quite a bit of money, but I really didn’t want to be flying into Houston during an evacuation.

I thought that was settled, but within an hour I had a phone call from Expedia. Continental had cancelled the new flight I’d just booked on the grounds that it coincided with an existing booking from Las Vegas to Houston! I explained the situation to Expedia again, but they were unable to get hold of Continental to put things right.

In the end, I decided that I just had to speak to someone in person. So I headed out to Las Vegas airport, and got the attention of the first Continental person I could find. He was fantastic! I explained exactly what the problem was, what I’d tried to do to fix it, and how Continental had cancelled that booking. It was quite complex when presented on multiple itinerary print-outs, but he got the idea.

Fifteen minutes later, he confirmed that my new booking was cancelled and wouldn’t be charged to me (phew!), and he converted the existing bookings into flights from Las Vegas to Newark and Newark to London.

I finally flew out of Las Vegas on Thursday. The replacement tickets worked fine. As far as I can tell, at that point there was still no official word from Continental HQ on what customers should be doing. Luckily, the staff had the initiative not to send tourists into a city that was in the middle of a massive evacuation!

Pocket PC Browser

Previously, I used a Sony Vaio laptop while travelling to the US. It has built-in wifi, and runs Windows XP. I had email, web and Skype software installed on it, and successfully used it with a T-Mobile wifi account. For this trip, I decided to experiment with using only a Pocket PC (PPC) (a Fuji Loox 720). Here are my findings.

The Internet Explorer browser on the PPC is fine for normal casual browsing. But if you find yourself in a position where you actually need to do something serious (such as checking flight options on Expedia), then it’s just not up to the job. You absolutely have to use a proper browser that is fully compliant with modern standards, can handle javascript, can pop up new windows etc. In my case, I had to buy time on a proper PC in the hotel’s business services suite. Not really expensive (I think it was $10 for half an hour), but annoying when I already had a computer with me.

Also, the PPC Internet Explorer browser is not fully compatible with all wifi services. I was able to access T-Mobile perfectly in Hyatt hotels (and Starbucks), but totally unable to access the wifi service in Hilton hotels. The first page would appear, but I couldn’t click through to the next page to enter my details. I assume that the site was trying to do some javascript or open a pop-up or something that the browser couldn’t handle.

Pocket PC Email

The T-Mobile wifi service blocked outgoing emails. I had already checked that my SMTP settings were properly configured before I left, so this baffled me. Some googling showed that T-Mobile does indeed block SMTP, in a move to prevent spammers using hotspots to do some “drive-by spamming”. Apparently, they’re only supposed to block non-authenticated SMTP (fair enough), but my 1&1 account always requires authentication by its very nature, as it is not associated with any particular ISP. So I don’t know why they were blocking it.

I got round the SMTP block problem in two ways. First, I could use GPRS on my GSM cellphone just for sending emails. Second, I could use my gmail account via the browser. Both worked fine.

Pocket PC Skype

Another problem that I don’t fully understand is that Skype doesn’t work properly with a T-Mobile wifi account on a PPC. For IM chatting, it’s fine. But if I make an audio call on it, the audio disappears after about a minute, and the call has to be reinitiated. The internet connection is still up at this point. I can use Skype fine over wifi at home on the PPC, and it works fine on the Vaio on T-Mobile wifi; so I’m not sure what’s going on here. Skype can work on the PPC, and Skype can be used over T-Mobile wifi, but put them all together and it doesn’t work.

Pocket PC GPS

I experimented with using a PPC and a Compact Flash GPS unit. The GPS I chose was a Haicom XTrac chipset, so that it would stand the best chance of getting a signal in built-up cities.

I installed the PrymeNav software and turned on the voice commands so I could leave the PPC in my shirt pocket as I walked around.

It worked fine, but despite the software having a “pedestrian” mode, it doesn’t really give useful directions for walking. It always tries to route via a road, so is misleading when you’re walking round an open space (such as a park). Needs some work, I think.

I went back to using the Garmin 60CS GPS which I’d brought along as a backup in case the experiment turned out this way.