Yellowstone Airport in Montana is located near the National Park and serves as a regional airport with several connecting flights for national and international service.

About the Airport | Smokejumper Base | Airport Services | BYellowstone Airport Business Information |  Airport News |   Location and Airport Maps

Airport website

Yellowstone Airport Manager
(406) 646 -7631

Montana Dept. of Transportation Aeronautics Division
(406) 444-2506

Montana Aviation

Their statement reads as follows:

——–  From Mexicana ———–

Mexicana Airlines (Grupo Mexicana) suspends its operations indefinitely.

The current administration received the company seven days ago under Business Reorganization (Concurso Mercantil) and technically bankrupt.

Financial deterioration and lack of agreements force Grupo Mexicana to stop flying. Grupo Mexicana deeply regrets all inconveniences caused to its passengers.

————- End ————–

The Mexicana.com Website home page appears to be down as of Sunday Morning, but CLICK HERE for the Mexicana Bankruptcy advisory portion to help you arrange for refunds or alternative flights.

San Francisco Airport (SFO) at night.
Picture by Andrew Choy – a Flickr “Picture of the Year” finalist in 2006

San Francisco International Airport:

SFO Airport | Getting to SFO | SFO Parking | SFO Airlines | about SFO | contact SFO Airport

San Francisco Airport is a national and international gateway to most of the world, even as SFO maintains the comfortable, well managed feel of much smaller Airports.

San Francisco is one of the world’s most charming cities, nestled next to the Pacific Ocean on the north/central coast of California.    Unlike the heat of the central California valley, Los Angeles, and most points south, the climate of San Francisco is mild to cool, with ocean breezes and fog keeping air temperatures cool most every day of the year.

San Francisco is home to many of the USA’s  great attractions.     The Golden Gate Bridge and Oakland Bay Bridges are engineering masterpieces.   Alcatraz Island is the former maximum security prison, now a national historic park which you can reach via boat tour from Pier 33 near another major San Francisco Attraction, “Fisherman’s Wharf”.     However no visit to San Franciso is complete without a trip the Chinatown San Francisco, one of the world’s greatest concentrations of chinese culture outside of China.    Here, Southern China immigration to California in the 1800’s – often to work on the growing US railroad empires –  brought tens of thousands of Chinese who settled permanently in California.     You will hear a lot of Cantonese spoken in Chinatown but not much Mandarin – the language of Beijing, Taiwan, and most of mainland China.     Cantonese is still spoken in southern China, especially near Hong Kong.

After your legs get tired from walking the hills of San Francisco you can consider buying a ticket on the cable cars that run along three routes, two of which take you to and from Fisherman’s Wharf.   Click here for route details.

Lombard Street is the “Crookedest Street” in the world as it zig zags back and forth.

OnlyInSanFrancisco.com is the official tourism site for San Francisco.

Twilight Photo of BWI Marshall Airport

Originally uploaded by BWI Marshall Airport

Baltimore’s BWI Marshall Airport is a gateway to Baltimore as well as many other East Coast destinations such as Washington D.C. which is only about an hour away by road or rail.   Named after American Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

When in Baltimore be sure to visit the beautiful “Inner Harbor” area, where you’ll find the historic USS Constellation docked and water taxis offer service to historic areas like Fells Point for a taste of Baltimore in the 1800s.

Below are links into the BWI Website for more information about Baltimore Washington International Airport BWI.

FAQs for BWI – Frequently Asked Questions about BWI

• Arrivals
• Departures
• Air Traffic
• Flight Tracker
• Airlines
• Flight Schedules

Gound Transportation:  Shuttles, Rails, Cars, Taxis, and parking information for BWI.

Terminal Maps – a printable PDF map that will help you get oriented to the gates and concessions in BWI.

Contact BWI:  This link will take you to contacts for the Airport Administration.   NOTE – generally questions about flights are best directed to your Airline and not to Airports.

It’s hard to beat HNL – Honolulu Airport in Hawaii on the Island of Oahu – for calm surroundings and a casual feel in a large Airport, though even *more* casual is Kona, the Airport on the big Island of Hawaii.

One thing that struck me in Hawaii is how small the islands are compared to what I had expected. Hawaii’s tourism footprint is one of the largest in the world in terms of visitors and reputation, yet you can drive around the “Big Island” of Hawaii in less than a single day, and drive entirely around Oahu – the most populated and visited of the Hawaiian Islands, in just a few hours.

It’s hard to argue that Samui Airport in Thailand isn’t one of the prettiest in the world, with elegance and open air that help make travel a lot friendlier.

Samui is a private airport run and mostly created for  Bangkok Airlines flights.

Photo Credit: Samui Airport

As Airlines reel from the global economic recession as well as troubles that have plagued them well before that, we find most Airlines have tightened and changed  some of their frequent flyer program rules.   Historically these have been pretty generous and in my experience it’s been easy in the past to get miles credited back when they expired, but this no longer seems to be the case.

If you travel on many airlines or infrequently, you’ll want to keep track of miles expirations.  In some cases these were changed without much warning from “never expire” to “36 months of inactivity” to “18 months of inactivity”.    It’s pretty easy to go 18 months without a flight on a particular airline so consider looking for ways to sign up for programs that will add small numbers of miles to your accounts, keeping them in good standing.

ALSO use caution -in fact generally you should AVOID buying or even gifting and transferring miles from the programs unless there are very small or no extra charges.   This will take a bit of math on your part.     For example this (United Airlines Mileage Plus) transfer fee to give miles to another frequent flyer does not look too intimidating at first glance but if you do the math you see it’s probably only rarely worth the cost:

How much does the transfer of Mileage Plus miles cost?
	There is a cost of US $0.015 per mile, plus a US $35 transaction fee. The order can be charged to a valid participating credit card. A member may transfer miles to a maximum of three people in one transaction.

Let’s say you (generously – aren’t you NICE! )  decide to transfer 25,000 miles to your relative / friend to buy a ticket out to see you.   This will cost  you $.015 x 25,000 + $35, or a whopping   $410 !      In many cases you’d not only lose a free ticket, but you’ve paid about what they’d need for a ticket to many US locations!

As with everything …. always watch your wallet!

Frequent Flyer Program list from FrequentFlyer.com:

• Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
• American AAdvantage
• America West FlightFund
• Continental OnePass
• Delta SkyMiles
• Midwest Express Frequent Flyer
• Northwest WorldPerks
• Southwest Rapid Rewards
• TWA Aviators
• United Mileage Plus
• US Airways Dividend Miles

Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

Paris Airport. “CDG” which stands for Charles De Gaulle, one of France’s most prominent and influential Presidents.

CDG Airport is the main France Airport, an international thoroughfare for the entire world.

Paris Airport is a main hub for inbound and outbound tourism as well as a key hub for Air France, Delta Airlines, Easyjet, and Federal Express.

Wikipedia on Paris Airport CDG

More:

• Aeroports de Paris is the official website for CDG
• Aéroport de Paris – Roissy Charles de Gaulle , in French, is the website of the Union des Aéroports Français.
• CDG Accident History

A notable event at Paris CDG was the collapse of Terminal 2E, though it’s always critical to note that Air travel remains *spectacularly safe* compared to other forms of transportation.   You are often at much greater risk *driving to and from* your airport than you are from the flight, and these photos are just for your prurient interest – CDG is a very safe place! Photos of Terminal 2E Collapse and rebuilding

The actual value of Duty Free remains something of a mystery to me and we’ll try to do a study here at QuickAid Airport Directory that helps you determine whether you should fuss with buying, carrying, and custom-izing duty free items during your international trips.

On international flights you’ll find most Airlines are working the duty free angle – allowing folks to shop via the inflight magazine and order duty free items for pickup at landing.

However you’ll find your largest – in the case of Beijing *massive* duty free shopping opportunities outbound from your foreign airport to bring home.

Although I’m not a regular buyer of spirits or high end merchandise, I found both in China and last month in Europe that the alcohol prices seemed unimpressive – offering little or no savings over local purchases and probably greater cost than online deals you can find for your favorite high end whiskey, etc. However I need to research a bit more on this topic – we’ll try to do a comparison of several duty free items soon.