A Briggs Passport & Visa Expeditors

A new article in “Market Watch”, an online newsletter published by Dow Jones that also publishes the Wall Street Journal, calls for the immediate resignation of Maura Harty, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, who is in charge of Passport Services, the agency of the Dept of State that issues passports.

The article says, “The government simply can’t keep saying it is wrong and moving on. This happens time and time again. It’s the worst administration in history and someone needs to be accountable and suffer consequence.

“The passport nightmare has caused more than 2 million passports to be delayed, a half-million of them for more than three months.”

It goes on to say, “Again, thanks Maura Harty. You’ve made my vacation and millions of other Americans’ the source of anxiety, frustration and disgust. The passport agency under your control regularly lies and provides misinformation. This is just what the government needs right now as it struggles with the worst reputation in history — both domestically and abroad. You prove its reputation is well-deserved. ”

So what does Market Watch suggest? It quotes her, then gives its solution.

” ‘Over the past several months, many travelers who applied for a passport did not receive their document in time for their planned travel. I deeply regret that,’ she said in congressional testimony. Don’t regret, resign…

“How about the administration send us a signal that it does indeed care about its citizens and fire Maura Harty and replace her with someone who can get the job done right. She had the chance and blew it. Now many of us are suffering the consequences of her inabilities and inactions. She should suffer the consequences too.”

By Johnny Moon

Times Square, one of New York City’s premier tourist destinations, is located on a major intersection in Midtown Manhattan - at the junction of Broadway and 27th Street and from West 42nd Street to West 47th Street.

It occupies the blocks between 6th and 8th Avenues from east to west, and West 40th and West 53rd Streets from north to south. Times Square was “christened” in 1904; not coincidentally, so were neon lights and the city’s first subway line. New Yorkers wasted no time in starting the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration tradition: they began ringing in the new year at Times Square in 1904 as well.

Previously, the area that has been called “Times Square” for over 100 years was known as The Longacre. On April 8, 1904, the name was changed to Times Square to commemorate the official opening of the brand new New York Times Building located on the triangle of land at the intersection of Broadway, 42nd Street, and 7th Avenue. The building was the tallest in Manhattan at the time. In 1913, the New York Times moved to a larger facility across Broadway and the New York Times Building was renamed the Allied Chemical Building. Today, it is known simply as One Times Square.

During the First World War, Broadway became known as one of the world’s premier theatre districts. The Great Depression hit New York City hard and many theatres had to close or offer less discriminating fare to attract more theatre-goers. Thus began a slow decline that reached its lowest point in the 1960s and 1970s. At this time, Times Square had become (in)famous for erotic bookstores, live nude shows, X-rated movies, and other adult fare. By 1975, many people considered Times Square to be the epitome of urban and moral decay.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, city and state officials began serious efforts to reverse the decline of Times Square. Today, Times Square has been restored to its former glory and boasts over 27,000 residents and over 26 million visitors each year, and makes a serious contribution to New York City’s economy-the annual total output is comparable to the economies of Bolivia and Panama, and far exceeds that of small countries.

New Year’s Eve at Times Square is now a global tradition. Approximately 1 million people gather there each year; additionally, millions across the United States and about 1 billion people all over the world tune into the New Year’s Eve celebration. The famous ball (currently made of
Waterford Crystal) drops from One Times Square, a tradition that began on December 31, 1907 and has continued ever since, except during World War Two when a moment of silence was observed followed by the tolling of church bells, as the blackout restrictions prevented excessive New Year’s Eve festivities.

Times Square has cemented its place in American popular culture. It has been featured in movies such as Vanilla Sky, King Kong, and Spider-Man. ABC’s Good Morning America and MTV’s Total Request Live are broadcast live from their studios at Times Square. Additionally, many exclusive, popular, and specialty retailers and restaurants have locations at Times Square, such as the Hard Rock Café, Virgin Records, Toys R Us, ESPN Zone, Sketchers, Planet Hollywood, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co, Ruby Foo’s, and Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.

Today’s Times Square is a perfect family destination.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order or renew your passport.
About The Author:

Johnny Moon recommends http://www.NewYorkHotelDeals.us for all of your NYC hotel reservation needs.

DOT Issues Safe Travel Guide for Consumers

Under the Safe Travel Initiative, the Department of Transportation (DOT) has issued a quick pocket-guide providing travelers with some tips they can take to make their trips safer when traveling with electronic devices and batteries. For example, the guide recommends passengers keep spare batteries in their original retail packaging; keep loose batteries covered with insulating tape to protect them from contact with metal objects; place each battery in its own protective case, plastic bag, or package; and pack spare batteries in carry-on baggage, rather than checked baggage. Also, passengers should use only chargers designed for the battery type and take steps to prevent crushing, puncturing or dropping batteries.

The DOT is asking that travel agents and anyone issuing e-tickets and other pre-flight electronic correspondence provide this guide to their clients, as well as link their Web site to the Safe Travel site. To learn more or download the guide, click here.

The article below, about the problems securing a passport, appeared on Yahoo today. The fact is that even an expedited passport can take six weeks to be issued. Here is the article:

Need a passport in a hurry? Good luck!

By BETH J. HARPAZ, AP Travel Editor

NEW YORK - Need a passport in a hurry? Good luck!

You can pay extra for expedited service from the State Department, but there are no guarantees. You can ask for an appointment at a passport center, but you may not get one. You can ask your congressman to intervene. Or you can hire a private expediter.
Whatever you do, the experience may leave you bitter.

“The last few months have been the most expensive, the most frustrating and the most nerve-racking time that I’ve had in my life,” said James Meehan, 21, a University of Southern California student who spent hours on the phone and hours at the federal building in Los Angeles trying to get the passport he applied for in May for a trip to Brazil in July. It didn’t arrive in time, so he also had to pay to change his tickets.

“There’s nobody to help and there’s nobody to care,” Meehan said. “You really do not have a voice. After all the problems I faced, who am I going to call? President Bush? The Better Business Bureau? I can’t take my service elsewhere. It’s not like canceling a cell phone.”
The six-week process for obtaining a passport ballooned to 12 weeks when new regulations were imposed in January requiring passports for air travel from Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean. Last month those rules were relaxed. Now Americans returning from those countries only need a receipt showing they applied for a passport.

But a backlog in processing passports remains. Here are options for desperate travelers, with anecdotes about how well they work.

• You can pay $60 plus overnight delivery fees for expedited service from the State Department. “The process can generally be completed in about two to three weeks,” said Ann Barrett, deputy assistant secretary of state for passport services.
Maura Harty, assistant secretary of consular affairs, said that “we regularly provide passports in one day or, in some cases, the same day, for travelers with urgent needs,” including “life-and-death emergencies.”

For leisure travel, Jessica Labaire of TNT Vacations in Boston said the expedited service “often works, but in many cases, it has not worked. It’s been completely sporadic.” Many TNT customers canceled trips this year when passports did not arrive in time. “We estimate a 10 to 20 percent loss in business because of this,” she said.

Jacqueline Hahey, 25, of Scottsdale, Ariz., applied for an expedited passport in May and got it in a week, in time for a trip to Costa Rica. “I”d just heard so many horrible stories, I almost fell over when it arrived at my door,” she said. “But it’s really so random - it’s the luck of the draw.”
• You can try getting help or an appointment by phone. “We encourage applicants seeking expedited service to contact us first for an appointment. Depending on the situation, we may be able to provide expedited service without having them come to a passport office,” said Barrett.
But getting through isn’t easy. “After 10 to 15 minutes of dead silence on the phone, you get a recording that says, ‘We’re sorry, there are no appointments available.’ Then they hang up on you,” said Meehan.

Amy Pennar, 22, of Tempe, Ariz., applied for a passport 14 weeks before her June 2 wedding in Poland. She panicked when it hadn’t arrived by mid-May.
“I’m frantically calling every day, but it would take two hours to get through, and so many people are on hold, it just hangs up on you,” said Pennar.

• You can contact your congressional representative.
With help from Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Pennar got her passport, and made it to the church in Krakow on time.

“We’ve had well over 200 cases in just the past two months,” said Flake spokesman Matt Specht.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, who called the passport backlog “outrageous, incomprehensible, unconscionable” at a July 11 congressional hearing, has helped 100 constituents with passport problems.

Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., has helped 240 families, including Matt Stuart. When Stuart’s passport hadn’t arrived 15 weeks after applying, his fiancee got 200 people to e-mail Sarbanes with the subject line, “Save Matt Stuart’s honeymoon!”

Sarbanes’ staff got a July 17 appointment for Stuart at a passport office, and he hopes to get the passport in time for a July 19 departure for Venice.

“Otherwise we’ll be honeymooning in Ocean City, Maryland,” said the bride, Crystalyn Thienpont, who directs “word-of-mouth services” at MGH Advertising in Owings Mills, Md.
“I’m glad that we could help the honeymooners - which we obviously would have done regardless of the e-mails,” Sarbanes said.

• You can pay a private expediter. Some 200 private companies are authorized by the State Department to obtain passports on behalf of others, according to Robert Smith, director of the National Association of Passport and Visa Services. NAPVS represents 20 of the largest expediters, handling hundreds of thousands of passport applications a year.

Each company is allotted a quota of daily appointments at passport offices. But they can’t fish your passport out of the bureaucracy if you’ve already applied, unless you cancel your original application and start the process over.

Demand for expediting services has increased, but the number of applications individual expediters are allowed to submit has decreased, Smith said.

“Every day we’re turning away people,” said Smith. “We’re not able to serve everyone who’s looking for help.”

CIBT Inc., the nation’s largest expediter with offices in seven cities, charges $174 to get a passport in four days or more, and $254 for a “super-rush emergency,” said spokesman Steven Diehl. “We’ve seen a 50 percent increase in passport work during the first six months of 2007, and we’ve nearly doubled our call volume.”

CIBT deals mostly with tour operators and corporate clients, but has been able to accommodate most requests from the public, Diehl said.

The State Department expects nearly 18 million passport applications this year, up from 12.1 million last year. The agency hired extra staff and ordered diplomats home with a goal of “reducing passport turnaround time to normal levels by the end of the year,” said Harty. “The passport situation is a top priority at the State Department, and we are devoting resources and personnel to getting back on track.”

(Article from Yahoo)

Finding Empty Seats on Busy Routes

To help you find some room in the sky — and avoid that spot in the middle — here’s an article from the New York Times that tells you how to avoid crowded planes to Europe this summer:

By MICHELLE HIGGINS
Published: July 15, 2007

THOUGH it’s never fun to be stuck on a crowded plane, it can be excruciating on long-haul flights like the ones to Europe that so many vacationers are about to take. And with load factors — the percentage of seats filled — expected to reach 90 percent or more on many days this summer, finding space to stretch out is harder than ever.

Flights between the United States and Europe are particularly tight in August, when travelers returning from vacations abroad are also competing with Europeans beginning their holiday trips to the States. And so far, botched car bombings in London and Glasgow don’t seem to be deterring travelers to Britain.

Anyone with the cash can pay more to stretch out in business or first class, but most travelers end up in coach, smushed up against a window, bumped by beverage carts in the aisle or worse — in the dreaded middle seat. But even without an upgrade or elite status in a frequent-flier program, it’s possible to nab a spot on a plane with plenty of empty seats — if you know what to look for.

To help you find some room in the sky — and avoid that spot in the middle — here’s a guide to avoiding crowded planes to Europe this summer.

Unexpected Routes

Some of the least-packed planes to popular European destinations are flown by airlines you might not think of. Take Los Angeles to Frankfurt. It’s no surprise that the German carrier Lufthansa is one of the most popular airlines on that route. Last August, 90 percent of its seats were filled, according to Back Aviation Solutions, an industry consulting firm. But Air India, which flies that same route on its way to New Delhi, was only half full last August. (While it’s difficult to predict how full a particular flight will ultimately be this summer, Frederick Roe, regional manager at Back Aviation Solutions, said that taking a look at how full planes were on a given route last summer “can be indicative” of what to expect this year.)

Air India’s flights to London from New York also generally have more space than the airlines most American travelers turn to first. “Air India is still one of New York’s best-kept secrets,” said John Massey, a spokesman for the airline. “Except for limited crunch periods, seats are generally available to both Europe and India on these flights.”

Flying to Paris? Consider Air Tahiti Nui. While Air France was carrying loads of about 90 percent from Kennedy Airport to Paris de Gaulle last July, Air Tahiti Nui, which last summer started flying from Kennedy to Paris on its way to Tahiti, flew planes about 59 percent full.
Air New Zealand is another surprise. “We find that hardly anyone in North America knows that we fly L.A. to London,” Karen Laugesen, a spokeswoman for the airline, wrote in an e-mail message. “The fact we’re called Air New Zealand must throw people; no one expects it.” The airline’s capacity on that route has just expanded, she added. Since the carrier swapped the 777s it was flying along the route for 747s, there are now 73 more seats per flight.

Vayama.com, a new Web site dedicated to international travel, is a good place to look for such counterintuitive combinations. You can also check online seat maps, found at just about any airline site, before booking your ticket to gauge how many empty seats are left, though that doesn’t mean they won’t fill up by the time you fly. A word of caution: Be sure to avoid flights just before or after national holidays for foreign carriers, even if you aren’t headed to the airline’s base country.

Brand-New Flights

Faced with stiff competition from low-cost airlines at home, United States carriers have been adding new international routes at a dizzying pace. Some fly to destinations outside of major hub cities and tend to be less crowded; others have yet to catch on. Delta alone is adding 14 new international routes this summer, including Kennedy to Pisa, Italy. Just last month, US Airways started nonstop service to Brussels and to Zurich from its hub in Philadelphia. That same month, Continental added daily nonstop flights between Athens and Newark. Continental has also been using larger aircraft to Geneva, helping increase its capacity to 409 seats daily between Newark and Switzerland.

Foreign airlines, too, have been expanding with new routes. Zoom Airlines, which has been operating low-fare flights between Britain and Canada since 2003, just started operating daily flights from Kennedy Airport to London Gatwick. Qatar Airways, the national carrier of Qatar, has been heavily promoting its new service from Doha, its capital, to Newark via Geneva. And Air France just started flying between Paris and Seattle.

André Hesselink, chief executive of Vayama.com, said, “The Newark-Stockholm corridor has become oversaturated with nonstop flights now offered by Continental, SAS and Malaysia Airlines.” All of those routes, he added, “have ample capacity this high season.”
Caroline Kerrigan, a hotel publicist from Manhattan, was able to get some sleep for the first time “in a very long time” on an overnight flight to Ireland, she said, by nabbing a seat on Flyglobespan, Scotland’s rapidly expanding low-fare airline, a week after it started service to West Airport Knock in County Mayo on May 27. Normally on red-eye flights to Ireland, she said, the planes are “packed to the gills.” But her flight from Kennedy Airport to Knock was half-empty. “I had two seats next to me,” she said. “It was great.”

With demand high for flights to Europe, however, such opportunities might not last. In fact, on her flight back on June 19, Ms. Kerrigan said, she didn’t have the entire row to herself as she did on the flight there, although there were many open middle seats.

Cheap Seats and Award Tickets

Even though a lot of factors go into determining how many award seats an airline makes available, “logic would tell you that the allocation of frequent-flier award seat availability is going to be higher among those flights where we expect to not fully sell out on that last day,” said Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines.

Though it’s a bit of a gamble, the same applies to flights with sale fares. And some airlines are making it easier for fliers to find those cheap seats. Lufthansa.com, for example, has a calendar matrix showing flights three days before and three days after the traveler’s requested dates. The matrix automatically highlights the cheapest fare in orange. “This is a good way, especially if you’re a last-minute booker, to find out which specific flights have more space than others,” said Jennifer Urbaniak, a spokeswoman for Lufthansa, since “the flights with the cheapest seats available typically have the most seats open at that time.”

(Article from the New York Times)

Hava-Is members to walk out this Friday

The New Anatolian / Ankara

16 July 2007

An indefinite strike, over a pay dispute with the national carrier, by thousands of aviation workers at Turkish Airlines (THY) has been set to begin on Friday (July 20) – the start of the summer holiday peak. Strike action by workers comes after a two week deadline set by the union expired without any agreement in negotiations on a new collective agreement for more than 11,000 workers at the airline.

Although Union representatives have been in discussions with the company since March, THY and the Turkish civil aviation workers’ union Hava-Is have so far failed to broker a new collective agreement. The Turkish Civil Aviation Union Hava-Is announced that its members working for Turkish Airlines (THY) and THY Technical will walk out.

The union represents pilots, cabin crew and ground staff at the airline. The move threatens to disrupt air travel at the height of the tourism season and further harm the sector, which is already struggling from a series of bombings at vacation resorts last year by PKK terrorists that scared away visitors.Head of Hava-Is union Atilla Yalcin said: “THY management has deliberately dragged their feet on this since March, counting on the protection of our country’s harshly anti-union laws, which do everything possible to delay and prohibit any industrial action.

“Unfortunately for them we have complied with this draconian process, and the next step is to strike,” he said. “In the last few days the airline management has been threatening to terminate the contracts of over 1,000 employees. They even said they might shut down THY Technical completely. However, we will not be intimidated.” According to the union, following the post-September 11th downturn THY workers accepted a 10 per cent cut in salaries. Since then the company has made a steady profit. The union has been negotiating for improved pay and work conditions for its members for the past four months. On July 4, Hava-is rejected a pay package offered by the company that did not meet the union’s expectations, Yalcin said.

The article below is from the online periodical, “Government Executive.” I include several comments on the article addressing the subject that appeared with the article.

House backs bill to boost hiring for passport processing By Brittany R. Ballenstedt

July 16, 2007

The House on Monday approved legislation that would enable the State Department to bring in extra help to process passport applications.

The bill (S. 966), which the Senate passed late last month, would allow State to rehire retired Foreign Service employees to staff overwhelmed passport processing centers across the country.

Demand for passports increased significantly at the beginning of this year, when travelers were required to comply with a 2004 law mandating passports for all U.S. citizens traveling by air within the Western Hemisphere. That requirement has been suspended to allow citizens with pending passport applications to travel until Sept. 30 with proof that they’ve applied.

Currently, the department is receiving more than 1 million passport applications a month and holds a backlog of about 500,000 that have been pending more than 10 weeks, instead of the usual six to eight, said Edgar Vasquez, a spokesman.

The House legislation would grant State the flexibility to rehire retired and fully trained passport processors on a temporary basis to help existing processors manage the increased demand.

Retirees now have little incentive to return because current law cuts their salaries by the amount of their pensions. While the department has some authority to waive such rules, that authority is limited to personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bill sponsor Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement that the current bottleneck is affecting all stages of passport processing, from the initial scanning of an application to the adjudication of citizenship. Call centers to assist people in New York City and across the country are overwhelmed with passport processing questions but do not have the staff to address the calls, Schumer said.

“The passport system is on the path toward a mass meltdown as processing delays have pushed the average wait time to two and a half months,” Schumer said. “By pulling these Foreign Service members off the bench, the State Department will gain additional manpower that could well be the key to breaking this passport logjam.”

State has tried lengthening work hours and requiring overtime, but has said it still lacks qualified personnel who have undergone the background checks necessary to handle sensitive passport adjudications. Currently, it takes the department between three months and a year to vet and train a new passport adjudicator, leaving the agency with little flexibility to handle surges in demand.

Vasquez said that the legislation would help a great deal, but meanwhile, the department has rolled out plans to return the time to six weeks by the end of this year. It plans to do this through an adjudication training program for Presidential Management Fellows and recent college graduates, who, after training, will move to one of the two busiest passport agencies in the country — the Portsmouth, N.H., and New Orleans offices. The sole focus of these employees will be to address the backlog, Vasquez said.

Vasquez added that through the training program, State plans to reduce the backlog and processing time to eight weeks by the end of September, and reach the six week goal by the end of the year.

He said, however, that the new legislation could help the department address the problem faster. “We welcome any such move by the Congress that will assist us in correcting the situation with the passports,” he said.

COMMENTS

I am a current Federal Employee, I applied for the Passport Specialist position nearly one month ago. Still have not heard yes, no, maybe?. The State Department IS NOT trying fix this problem. They can’t, they don’t know how. If they were, they would be filling these position and getting people their passports. What’sUpWithThat? Posted July 17, 2007 11:01 AM
Hiring more people may help with the backlog. But what happens to them after the backlog is cleared up? I get tired of people trying to put the blame on others. The Passport Agency is not at fault here. It has been know for sometime that the new regulations would go into effect in January. Anyone that expected to travel this year should have applied for their passports earlier. My passport was to expire in February. I renewed it in October instead and had it back in three weeks. My position is not to hire additional processors. Let those who procrastinated wait and reinstate the requirements. Ralph Rankin Posted July 17, 2007 9:21 AM

I am leaving for Italy on July 25, 2007 to attend a family wedding and see my elderly relatives. I send for my renewal in mid-May. I supposedly made an appointment with the Passport agency in Philadelphia [through the dummy automated system]. I don’t understand why there is such a problem. Once they lifted the restrictions for passports to the islands, mexico, etc., the processing volume should not be any different than usual. This is a disgrace. I think it is just a way for the State Department to collect expedited fees. My cousin sent for a “new” passport a few weeks after I sent for mine and paid the expedited $60 fee. Guess what, she has her passport. I am sorry but this does not make sense to me. I think we should be reimbursed for any costs we incur to get a passport and most importantly for any lost travel expenses. Rosemarie Maribello Posted July 17, 2007 8:17 AM