What Happens If You Don’t Put Your Phone Into Airplane Mode?

I’m a travel and food writer based in London. Long intrigued by all I had heard about up-and-coming Albania, my partner Dan and I booked a four-day weekend in the capital, Tirana.

A cellphone allows travelers to have a camera always at the ready. The latest phones offer multiple lenses with better resolution and enhanced macro and telephoto capabilities, enabling virtually every moment to be captured for posterity. This can be both a blessing and a curse. When should we be taking a photograph and when should we simply be taking the time to look and wonder at the world around us? Here are a few tips on when and what to shoot, and how to better frame what we see when we travel.

Europe's most active volcano erupted Sunday, forcing one of Sicily's main airports to close amid summer travel. 

When Billy Joel sang about a “New York State of Mind” he was talking about going home to the Big Apple.

Few moments are more frustrating during travel than when the baggage carousel stops and you realize your bag didn’t make it. While mobile tracking helps airlines make sure that your checked luggage arrives at your destination safely and on time, it is still a far from perfect system. During 2022, approximately 26 million bags were mishandled worldwide, according to SITA, an IT provider for the air transport industry. That’s about 7.6 out of every 1,000 passengers that are mishandled (meaning delayed, damaged, lost, or stolen). And while some airlines will compensate passengers with miles if their bags are delayed, it’s still a high enough figure that some travelers might wonder if there’s another—better—option.

This month, ballet fans will have the rare opportunity to see the acclaimed Australian Ballet in London. As part of the company’s 60th anniversary celebrations, performances by The Australian Ballet at London’s Royal Opera House will be the only performances outside of Australia. The 2023 London Tour will be the first international tour for The Australian Ballet under the leadership of Artistic Director David Hallberg. It will be the company’s first return to the Royal Opera House after an absence of 35 years.

I’ve never been to London, but I’ve experienced it many times. From sitting in on royal meetings in Buckingham Palace to passing through the walls of King’s Cross Station at Platform 9 ¾, London has come alive in my imagination through some of my favorite books and movies.

Enter the United Airlines “Billion Mile Giveaway” sweepstakes by September 30, 2016, for a chance to win one of 100 grand prizes of 1 million United MileagePlus miles, plus $750 to cover taxes, each. Runner-up prizes include smaller numbers of miles. In total, 1 billion miles will be given away.

According to technology solutions company Asurion, 19 million phones are lost or stolen each year, and traveling puts you at higher risk for theft. Don’t wait until it’s too late—know what to do if your phone is lost or stolen on a trip so you can recover faster, protect your identity, and not lose all those great vacation photos.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the people I met in Egypt.

One of the world’s largest passport printing companies is experimenting to see if passports, like boarding passes, concert tickets, and countless other documents, can be securely put on a smartphone. According to the Telegraph, the paperless passports would function much the same way, with travelers simply scanning their phone at customs.

By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard that Thomas Cook Group, the British travel operator—which encapsulates retail travel agencies, wholesale tour packagers, and even airlines—has shuttered under bankruptcy. This is the largest tour operator failure in not-so-recent memory; it’s left some 600,000 travelers stranded at their foreign destinations, and many tour buyers who haven’t started their trips yet are unlikely to see the tours they bought or any money they prepaid. The issue raises the question: What happens to customers when a tour operator they paid shuts down; are there any legal guarantees of reimbursement? The short answer: only for some people.