This might be a fun game.

Over at the end of our ‘Cities You Really Hate’ article, hipersons suggests that it might be fruitful to explore what our least favourite airports are worldwide. He or she submits Charles de Gaulle (in Paris) and Chicago’s O’Hare for consideration.

My most loathed airport is definitely Los Angeles‘ LAX. To transfer from a domestic to international flight (or vice versa), you have to exit a building, enter another one and go through the hellish security process all over again. Combine this with some staff members who can’t help you (because they don’t know what you’re supposed to do), a food court that serves scarily overpriced fare in the international terminal and a lack of clean, comfortable resting areas, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Our Twitter master Mark waxes philosophical: ‘It is difficult to answer this question simply. Airports are designed to be inconspicuous, so the worst airports are those that have failed to reach these heights of organised boringness. But they are also the ones containing the most character of their destination. Mumbai airport (Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport) would take the cake then as my most reviled airport because it failed to be inconspicuous. The immigration officer laughed at my surname; my prepaid taxi driver couldn’t be found for 20 minutes. However, it is also my favourite airport because it had so much character.’

And Lonely Planet cofounder Tony Wheeler has a definite opinion: Charles de Gaulle, Paris, ‘for the 1960s Jetsons style of architecture, stupid transparent pedestrian tunnels crisscrossing back and forth. Not to mention circular terminals so you come out looking for the taxi stand and end up walking clockwise 359 degrees when (if you’d only known) you could have walked one degree counterclockwise. You have to take a bus from some terminals to get to the train station. Cramped and miserably equipped airside facilities.’ Sounds great!

What’s your least favourite airport?

(Image by Flickr user Stuck in Customs)

DARTH VADER’S INSPIRATION: MOUSTACHED HELMETS

Lonely Planet author and KillingBatteries blogger Leif Pettersen is pondering whether or not to grow a beard on the road. He worries about cleaning it and whether it will hurt his beauty appeal. So he asked the “76-Second Travel Show” to help out. We have, by looking at “beards of time” graph, talking with a real travel beard expert Christoph Rehage (the German traveler behind the excellent Longest Way walk around China: see the video) and noting how even Darth Vader wasn’t immune to facial hair’s enduring appeal when he picked out his helmet.

Plus, as anyone listening to 90% of the bands touted on Pitchfork.com or walking about Williamsburg, Brooklyn knows, beards are in.

From my point of view, travel plus time equals a beard. if you’re going to consider a beard, do it right. Keep it wild. Once you trim it, make it cute, or fashion it into ’soul patches,’ ‘baseball goatees’ or the Lincoln low-baller, you might as well shave off the whole thing.

Having a big messy beard benefits (mostly male) travelers in that people will either assume you’re some scientific genius, or a freak. Either way, no one will mess with you.

What do you think? Travel beards, yes or no?

APD first entered many people’s consciousness when it was doubled in in February 2007 as a environmental tax on flying. Critics said there was no proof that monies raised were doing anything to help the environment. Supporters said the polluter should pay.

It now costs more to fly from London's Heathrow Airport

Now Air Passenger Duty has been raised again. On short-haul flights the charge has only gone up by £1, to £11. It’s on long-haul journeys you’re most likely to notice the difference. The cost goes up the further you fly and if you go as far as Australia or New Zealand you’ll pay £60 rather than the previous £40.

You’ may have heard various prominent airline industry types getting in a lather about this in the UK media over There’s not much you can do about APD – it’ll be added to the already long line of charges added agonisingly on to what you thought was a cheap fare – but we do have a few suggestions for making the pill a little easier to swallow:

-         Though these figures sound high, in reality you can often shave this cost off a flight, especially a long-haul one. Shop around for the best rates, be flexible on departure dates and times and consider compromising on stopovers.

-         On short-haul journeys, look into taking the train. You’ll avoid the charge altogether and have a much more fun journey.

-         Go hand luggage only: many airlines charge for checking a bag. Carry your own on and you’ll pay less, usually saving more than you’re paying in additional APD. OneBag.com has some suggestions.

-         Remember: if you don’t fly, claim APD back through your airline! You can claim back this and other taxes, even on non-refundable flights.

Tom Hall

1. What tasty French grape celebrates the beginning of its wine season with a weeklong festival starting on November 18?

Nouveau Beaujolais

2. What Australian budget airline informed passengers in Tasmania that their flight would be delayed for three days?

Tiger Airways

3. What US city did two pilots accidentally miss landing in by about 150 miles?

Minneapolis

4. What continent is our community manager Venessa dying to see?

Antarctica

5. Where was this image taken?

The Northern Territory of Australia

6. What nation is saying goodbye to McDonalds, which is withdrawing its restaurants from the country?

Iceland

7. In what country has a man claiming to be 112 years old wed a 17-year-old woman this week?

Somalia

8. What exclusive Caribbean island (known to host rock stars such as Mick Jagger) will set you back about US$150,000 for a week’s villa rental?

Mustique

9. What nation declared a swine flu (H1N1) emergency this week? (And what does that mean?)

The USA

10. Window or aisle?

You be the judge!

This has to take the cake.

Remember David Carroll, whose acoustic guitar was smashed by United Airlines’ luggage handlers? If you don’t, here’s the song he recorded, which went viral:

Well, turns out that United has yet again managed to get in David’s bad books. The airline lost David’s luggage -- as he was en route to give a talk about customer service.

Not to pick on poor United, which has had more than its fair share of woes recently, but is it time to look carefully at the state of the passenger aviation industry? A few days ago, Luke wrote about the perception that budget airlines are letting standards drop precipitously (for example, stranding passengers for days on end). Luke asks whether we should just grin and bear it, given that we should expect to get what we pay for.

But it’s clear that general dissatisfaction isn’t confined to the budget-airline realm anymore. Full-service airlines are seeing complaints about uncomfortable seat pitch, horrendous food and even ‘robotic, mummy-like flight attendants’.

So what’s going on? Is the general standard slipping, or are our visions of yesterday tainted by nostalgia (or price regulation, which forced airlines to compete on service and quality)?

I suspect I know what David Carroll would say.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has to be in the running for the most improved city of the past 15 years. Once known for its smoke-belching factories, the riverfront is alive with pedestrians, boaters with beers, a couple stadiums and nearby you can walk past street art and visit the Andy Warhol Museum. Well worth a day and a half, more if you take a side trip to nearby Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright-built house over a waterfall 90 minutes southeast.

It’s also champion city (Pittsburgh teams won last year’s Super Bowl and Stanley Cup), so the 76-Second Travel Show visited. But things got hijacked by a certain country star.

By the way, anyone have any insight why the Ohio River, which starts here and ends at Cairo, Illinois, isn’t named the Pennsylvania River or Illinois River or even Kentucky River?

They say you get what you pay for, and nowhere does this annoying old truism seem more spot on than in the stripped-back world of discount airlines. Virtually everyone who has travelled on one of these cut-price people carriers has a tale of woe involving lost luggage, non-existent service or unscheduled cancellations.

Recently, passengers on a Tiger Airlines (one of Australia’s cheapie options) flight from Hobart to Melbourne faced a three-day delay because one of the flight crew was ill and no replacement could be found. The passengers were steaming mad, the airline apologetic, the staff flanked by security to protect them from afore-mentioned passengers spitting comments about ‘monkeys and peanuts’.

But are we right to expect any better? Or should anything prefixed with ‘discount’, ‘bargain’ or ‘crazy sale’ be expected to be less than stellar? When we go for the cheaper option elsewhere – rough sheets, rattley cars – we accept it’s going to be second-rate. So why then do we find it so difficult to accept in air travel? If I buy a bottle of ‘Old Sporran’ scotch for $20, I don’t expect it to taste like the Macallan. In turn, if I buy a seriously discounted airfare, all I’m hoping is that it’ll get me to my destination in one piece, and that’s about it.

Perhaps it’s because air travel is inherently stressful, that discount airlines seem to foster such loathing – because they charge for everything and can add to your pre-flight apprehension. Discount airlines are also insanely popular, and with so much ferrying of tight-fisted travellers going on around the globe, problems seem inevitable. It also seems that long-standing or ‘legacy’ airlines, (i.e. not cheap, but the nuts are free) haven’t overly endeared us to them by being comparatively expensive and frankly, still a bit crap. And of course, it’s not like anything can go wrong on your traditional airlines, is it?

So, bargain basement or top shelf – what’s your flying style?

Warning some footage may be disturbing to some viewers.

Worn out of all this season’s horror, fear and fright? The 76-Second Travel Show is too, and offers a comforting TOP 3 SAFE & SECURE LIST to ensure a safe and secure Halloween season.

One CAN be had in Transylvania by the way. Here are four amazing things about Transylvania I learned researching the chapter for Lonely Planet’s Romania & Moldova guide that I always tell friends visiting there:

1. For great homestay potential, save a couple nights to sleep, drink, hike at Mioritica, a homestay in Sibiel village west of Sibiu. It’s run by a local teacher, who shares the drinks, invites clarinetists over and puts the beer in the chilly brook running by the few rooms. Email coldeasv [at] yahoo [dot] com.
2. Rent a car for a few days. Roads can be awful, but back roads to random Saxon villages, with churches and homestays, opens up the region’s past. Something you can’t really access via bus or train.
3. Sure, you can visit Bran Castle (the over-hyped “Dracula castle”), but the spookier medieval one Hunedoara (an otherwise gray, communist town most miss) looks more the part of a place where fanged residents may bite you.
4. Party in Cluj-Napoca. The biggest city of Szekely Land, home to many of Romania’s ethnic Hungarian population (including at one time the Cheeky Girls), it’s a gorgeous town with loads of subterranean bars and accessible student life.