Source: USA TODAY

Virgin America landed at the top of the latest Consumer Reports ratings of airlines in its first appearance on the list, receiving some of the highest customer satisfaction scores any airline has in years.

The airline, which made its debut in 2007, got high marks in all areas that the carriers were judged on, especially baggage handling even though there’s a $25 charge for first and second checked bags.

Spirit Airlines found itself at the bottom of the ratings, with the lowest marks across the board. The carrier has some of the lowest fares in the industry but charges fees for everything from booking a flight to carrying on a bag. Readers also complained about Spirit’s seats, some of the tightest spaces in the industry.

Consumer Reports‘ ratings are based on a February survey of 16,663 subscribers who flew a combined 31,732 domestic flights. They were asked to rate their satisfaction with the airlines’ check-in ease, cabin-crew service, cabin cleanliness, seating comfort, baggage handling, and in-flight entertainment.

Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways also were rated highly, especially for their baggage handling. Readers liked that Southwest lets fliers check in two bags for free and JetBlue lets them check one bag at no charge. The two carriers also received high marks for their check-in ease and cabin crew service.

“While other airlines on the list like Southwest and JetBlue have done a very good job of satisfying fliers, Virgin America is a cut above in the eyes of our readers,” said Amanda Walker, senior editor of Consumer Reports.

Readers said they liked flying Virgin America partly because their leather seat cushions were comfortable even in Economy class. They also rated the carrier’s in-flight entertainment system highly.

“With new planes, fleetwide WiFi, touch-screen entertainment and award-winning service, we take pride in our operational excellence and the commitment our teammates have made to creating a really great domestic airline,” Virgin America spokeswoman Jennifer Thomas told Today in the Sky. “We see today’s Consumer Reports result as continued proof that we’re moving in the right direction and delivering on our promise to guests to elevate the air travel experience.”

Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza defended his airline on CBS’ This Morning, saying that “we care what our customers care about, which is price.”

“One of the things that Consumer Reports survey didn’t ask is ‘where do you get the lowest fare?,’” He said. “They asked about leg room, they asked about check-in, bag fees, and things like that. But the total price they pay on Spirit Airlines is less than they pay on anyone else.”

Baldanza compared Spirit Airlines to McDonald’s, saying, that “No one goes into McDonald’s and is surprised they don’t see filet mignon on the menu. When they come to Spirit, they know what they’re getting. They know they’ll get a lower total price than they’ll get anywhere else.”

JetBlue also shined for its in-flight entertainment, while Southwest did not. Southwest offers wireless entertainment on your personal electronic device. JetBlue also outscored Southwest on cabin cleanliness and seating comfort. JetBlue passengers get a couple of extra inches of leg room compared with most other airlines.

Hawaiian Airlines received high marks for check-in ease, cabin service, cleanliness, and baggage handling. Hawaiian’s in-flight entertainment was not so popular.

Passengers like Alaska Airline’s check-in, cabin staff and baggage handling. Yet they weren’t so impressed with the airline’s seats and entertainment options.

Delta Airlines and Frontier Airlines got very good marks for check-in ease, but everything else was mediocre. Delta got low marks for seating comfort.

Lower-rated carriers, such as American Airlines, United Airlines, and US Airways, all received the lowest rating possible for cabin cleanliness, seating comfort, and in-flight entertainment.

The full report can be found online at ConsumerReports.org and in the July 2013 issue of Consumer Reports magazine.

Here are the rankings based on an overall reader score (on a 0-100 scale):

1. Virgin America, 89

2. Southwest Airlines, 85

3. JetBlue Airways, 85

4. Hawaiian Airlines, 82

5. Alaska Airlines, 81

6. Frontier Airlines, 78

7. Delta Air Lines, 71

8. US Airways, 66

9. American Airlines, 66

10. United Airlines, 63

11. Spirit Airlines, 50

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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In a bid for more loyal customers, Marriott International is going after their stomachs.

Starting June 22, Marriott Rewards Gold and Platinum Elite members plus a guest will get free continental breakfast seven days a week in the lounge or restaurant of participating hotels in the U.S. and Canada, the company will announce Tuesday.

If you’d rather not claim your muffin in the morning, you can opt for an additional 750 rewards points, instead.

“One of our most important missions is taking care of our best guests,” says Ed French, senior vice president of Marriott Rewards. “Lounge access and free breakfast . . . are generally two benefits that our most frequent traveler says they care about in the elite program.”

Hotels started adding the free breakfast perk more aggressively during the economic downturn, when shrinking travel budgets among companies and average Americans forced many people to stay put. Companies are sending employees back out on the road, but many business travelers say a free breakfast helps with their limited budgets.

In 2012, 79% of hotels offered complimentary breakfast, up from 55% in 2010, according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association.

“If a property doesn’t offer free breakfast, they could be at a competitive disadvantage,” says Adam Weissenberg, vice chairman and U.S. leader of Deloitte’s travel, hospitality and leisure sector.

Marrriott’s elite customers — in addition to The Ritz-Carlton Rewards gold and platinum members — can get their daily breakfasts at participating JW Marriott, Autograph Collection, Renaissance and Marriott hotels in the U.S. and Canada. Previously, they got breakfast on weekdays.

Like Marriott, platinum status members of the Starwood Preferred Guest program have the option of choosing a free continental breakfast.

If you’re not an elite rewards member, you’ll have to buy your own breakfast. A typical continental breakfast is about $15.

At other hotel chains, especially midprice ones, breakfast is free to all. The offerings, too, are getting more elaborate.

Hyatt House, an extended-stay property, began rolling out a new “Morning Spread” for all guests last month with a made-to-order omelet bar, new vegetarian items and rotating hot items.

Holiday Inn Express has an extensive free breakfast menu with rotating egg and meat selections and a signature local item, such as steamed stuffed buns in China. Staybridge Suites last year upgraded its breakfast buffet to include breakfast pizzas and a build-your-own breakfast sandwich bar.

“Ultimately, people want choices,” says Francie Schulwolf, vice president of corporate communications for The Americas at InterContinental Hotels Group, which owns Holiday Inn and Staybridge. “They want both hot and cold food offerings, and most importantly, they want to be in control of what they eat for breakfast.”

Does a free yogurt parfait make a customer return for another stay?

A Deloitte study of 4,000 travelers released earlier this year found that when choosing hotels, travelers looked at price, free parking, comfort and location. Loyalty programs ranked near the bottom of factors taken into consideration.

Weissenberg says “personalized service” is what breeds traveler loyalty.

“If free breakfast is very important to these travelers, then it may create loyalty, but ideally, the hotel should know more about each traveler and what they want if the hotel wants to make their loyalty program effective,” he says. “For example, whether a traveler would prefer a drink at night, or a free movie, etc.”

Joshua Holmberg, a vice president of sales for a software company in Littleton, Colo., says he will try to book a hotel that offers a free breakfast.

He says having one meal taken care of helps “from a cost perspective, as well as the convenience of one fewer expense report entry.”

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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United Airlines flew a Boeing 787 Dreamliner on Monday for the first time after a four-month grounding due to battery problems.

United Flight 1 started its voyage at 11 a.m. at Houston Intercontinental and landed at Chicago’s O’Hare airport shortly before 1:30 p.m. It is one of six Dreamliners operated by United.

The flight carried 162 passengers including United CEO Jeff Smisek and Boeing CEO James McNerney, according to the Chicago Tribune.

A second 787 is expected to land at Newark Liberty Airport at about 3:45 Eastern, the Tribune reports.

The fuel-efficient planes ran into problems when batteries overheated on flights on other airlines earlier this year. A fire broke out on one flight and another plane had to make an emergency landing. The batteries have been fixed to prevent any overheating.

“The 787 offers an unmatched travel experience for our customers and co-workers, and we are thrilled to be flying it again,” Smisek said in a press release. “This is an exciting time at United. Our investment in the Dreamliner is just one more example of our commitment to delivering the best product, route network and customer service in the industry.”

United will operate additional Dreamliner flights from Houston to other domestic hubs this week. But the aircraft was designed for long-haul flights.

The Dreamliner will launch international service with a June 10 flight from Denver to Tokyo. Other routes will be added this summer including Los Angeles to Shanghai and Houston to London.

The carrier expects to take delivery of two more Dreamliners later this year.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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A couple who had intended to fly from Los Angeles to Dakar, Senegal, ended up 7,000 miles away in Dhaka, Bangladesh, because of an airline error.

Sandy Valdivieso and her husband Triet Vo, 39, told the Los Angeles Times that they didn’t think anything was amiss when they got their Turkish Airlines boarding passes for their flights from Los Angeles to Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Their passes had them going from LAX, the airport code for Los Angeles International Airport, to IST, Istanbul, to DAC.

It turns out that DAC is the airport code for Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The airport code for Dakar is DKR.

“I guess we were just going by the flight number on our tickets, and that DAC was printed on them,” Valdivieso, 31, an academic counselor at UCLA, told the Times. “You just assume that everything is correct.”

Valdivieso booked economy class seats on their December flight from Los Angeles to Dakar, via Istanbul, for $2,700. Both their tickets and baggage claim receipts had DAC as their final destination.

Their flight to Istanbul went smoothly. On their second flight, “when the flight attendant said we were heading to Dhaka, we believed that this was how you pronounced ‘Dakar’ with a Turkish accent,” Valdivieso said.

They quickly fell asleep. Valdivieso finally realized something had gone terribly wrong when she woke up hours later and noticed that the travel map on the overhead video screen showed the plane flying over the Middle East.

After the plane landed, the couple proceeded to try to sort out the error. It took nine hours. Turkish Airlines flew them back to Istanbul. From there, they got on their six-hour flight to Dakar. Their luggage made it to them two days later.

The carrier did not charge them for the extra flights. But the couple have been trying since December to get the airline to compensate them financially for the mistake.

It wasn’t until the Los Angeles Times contacted the airline that they were given two free economy class tickets to any Turkish Airlines destination.

Rick Seaney, co-founder of the website FareCompare.com, told the Times that it’s not that uncommon for mix-ups to happen with travelers’ itineraries. But he’s never heard of an airline sending passengers to completely wrong continents.

“This is just brutal,” he said. “A lot worse than losing your bag.”

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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Here’s a wake-up call: The hotel front desk will do one better than ringing your phone in the morning. They’ll send an actual human being to your room.

Don’t worry. They won’t come in and kiss you good morning. But they might bring you coffee.

Never mind that most travelers nowaways have Smartphones with built-in alarm clocks. Hoteliers say the human wake-up call is a way to personalize a guest’s stay.

“The hotel team finds the service to be a bit nostalgic and a romantic throwback to a simpler time,” says Paul McKenzie, general manager of The Wolcott Hotel in New York, which will send an employee to a guest’s door if a wake-up call is unanswered.

Some examples:

•At the Westin Resort and Casino, Aruba, once you respond to the first telephone wake-up call, an employee goes to your room and knocks on your door to make sure you actually get up.

•At Las Ventanas al Paraiso, A Rosewood Resort in Los Cabos, a butler shows up at your room to wake you up with complimentary tea, coffee and breakfast breads.

•At the Mandarin Oriental and The Four Seasons, a person rather than an automated system will call to wake you up. If you don’t answer, you’ll get a wake-up knock.

•You don’t want to oversleep at The Adolphus in Dallas. If you miss your wake-up call three times, a security guard will show up at your door.

Hotels have always taken the wake-up call seriously. IHG’s Crowne Plaza, for instance, has a wake-up call guarantee. If you don’t get your call within five minutes of the requested time, you won’t have to pay for your room.

Travelers, too, still want to have an option of a wake-up call. In a study to be released Tuesday of 285 PGA TOUR golfers such as Rickie Fowler, Crowne Plaza found that 53% considered the assurance of a wake-up call a priority.

But the wake-up call became less personal over the years, says Chekitan Dev, an associate professor of marketing and branding at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. It used to be that a person would call you. Then in the late 1980s, hotels turned to automated systems. Then all you’d get was a ring and silence.

In the ever-competitive race for loyal customers, however, many properties, especially luxury and boutique hotels, are now getting creative with the wake-up call, he says. Some boutique hotels even have recordings of celebrity voices.

Personalizing the wake-up call, Dev says, is an “opportunity to make that one additional brand impression.”

“To recapture that opportunity, I expect that more hotels will go back to the old in-person system of wake up calls,” he says.

Richard Roy, general manager of The Westin Resort and Casino, Aruba, says the hotel gets 15 to 30 requests for wake-up calls each day.

“Some guests sleep through the call, while others turn their phone ringers off and snooze,” he says. “There is also always the possibility of mechanical failure, so the personalized touch is that full-proof safety net.”

Bailey Allard, a business consultant who travels 100,000 miles a year, says he’d appreciate a human wake-up call.

“I would be tempted not to answer my phone just in hopes that someone would bring me coffee,” he says.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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Fast food has gone glam at hotel restaurants.

Hotels are moving away from traditional, sit-down restaurants and serving comfort food with an upscale twist.

On many hotel restaurant menus, you’re more likely to find kimchi shrimp nachos and Bloody Mary bacon thrice-cooked fries than salmon with a side of spinach. As for where people like to chow down these days: Hip lounges, benches or tiki bars rather elegant dining rooms.

Some examples:

– The Hudson Hotel in New York, a Morgans Hotel Group property, recently opened Hudson Common, “a modern day beer hall and burger joint”. Customers order burgers on brioche buns, sandwiches such as the French toast grilled cheese, or duck fat fries from a counter. A text lets them know when they can pick up their food to eat in a dark lounge with leather couches or elsewhere.

– Taco stands are en vogue. IHG’s Holiday Inn Resort Los Cabos has turned its La Terraza restaurant into a taco stand between noon to 5 p.m. with a rotating menu of tacos and freshly-made drinks. Back in the States, the Hudson Hotel has opened an outdoor taco stand, Tequila Park.

– Kimpton’s Eventi Hotel in New York has Brighton, made to look like Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach boardwalk. Diners order from GoBurger, Fish Shack or a Tiki Bar. Lobsters rolls, BLTs, shakes and beer can be consumed indoors or outside in the Eventi Plaza.

– All Hotel Indigos have casual, fast-dining options with locally-inspired dishes. At Hotel Indigo Alamo in San Antonio, for instance, guests can dine on fresh tacos from 1909 Bar and Bistro or Sanitary Tortillas.

Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association, says the casual hotel dining trend is an extension of what’s happening across the restaurant industry. A majority of all restaurant traffic, 70%, is take-out or delivery.

“Hotel dining is definitely not what it was 10 to 20 years ago, just as the industry is structured differently than it was 10 to 20 years ago,” he says. “One of the most important drivers of restaurant industry sales, and this is also true of lodging food service, is convenience.”

Alan Philips, vice president of food and beverage for Morgans Hotel Group, says the new hotel dining style is much more “democratic.”

“We give you the level of food you would get in the best restaurants and we do it in a manner that is acceptable and easy and casual,” he says.

John Avdrill, a publicist in New York, recently met with friends at Hudson Common. They all got out of work at different hours. Each ordered food and drinks when they wanted, but still got a chance to see each other.

“You’re not worrying about a reservation or everyone showing up at once and ordering food together at a large table,” he says. “It’s nice to have that flexibility.”

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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Flights are increasingly delayed because fewer air-traffic controllers are in airport towers, as the Federal Aviation Administration has furloughed about 1,500 a day to meet federal spending cut targets.

QUESTION: What can I do as a traveler to try to avoid delays?

ANSWER: Not much. Always check on your flight before heading to an airport to see whether it is delayed. Nearly all airlines now alert travelers via e-mail or text if their flights are delayed or canceled. If you’re booking connecting flights, opt for a longer layover to make sure you make your connection in the event of a delay.

Q: Can I anticipate whether my flight is likely to be delayed?

A: Major hub airports — such as Chicago O’Hare, Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles, where fliers make connections — are likely to face more delays during peak travel hours in the morning and evening. New York City, which is the nation’s busiest air space, also has been prone to delays. Any weather problems anywhere can cause a ripple effect of delays across the country.

Q: Why is that?

A: Network carriers, such as United and American, operate on a hub-and-spoke system. They route flights through central airports known as hubs. From there, flights take passengers to smaller cities. Many of these hubs, such as Chicago and Los Angeles, have had their air-traffic controllers furloughed. To make up for the staffing shortage, the FAA is spacing flights farther apart. When delays happen in a hub like Los Angeles, they’re going to spread to the smaller airports. Southwest Airlines, meanwhile, runs a point-to-point operation, meaning they fly directly from one small city to another. Their flights are less delay-prone.

Q: So, delays can crop up any time?

A: Yes. A number of factors can lead to delays. There could be a large number of employees out sick, bad weather or strong winds. Add to that a shortage of air-traffic controllers, and you’re probably not going to get to your destination in time. There are a few things airlines can do to recover from a delay that starts earlier in the day. They can turn planes around more quickly or look for shortcuts in the air, but says Kevin Schorr, vice-president of Campbell-Hill Aviation Group, an airport and airline consulting firm, “it can potentially mess things up for the whole day.”

Q: What can be done about it?

A: Congress and the Obama Administration have been at a stalemate over the furloughs. Congressional Republicans have argued that the Obama Administration could have cut the $637 million it is required to from the FAA’s budget by Sept. 30 in other ways. The FAA says they had no other choice. Lawmakers are now trying to figure out ways to shift funding so that the furloughs can end. But with Congress leaving Friday for a week-long break, it’s unclear if a quick compromise can be reached. Travelers can keep voicing their frustration to their representatives in Congress and hope that spurs them to action, Schorr says.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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UPDATE: The FAA has lifted a temporary ground stop placed on flights into Boston Logan International Airport.

The ground stop came after two bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Flights from other airports that were headed to Logan were kept on the ground until the stop was lifted. Departures at Logan were not affected.

The FAA said in a written statement that it has also placed a “temporary flight restriction” over part of the city “at the request of law enforcement.”

It initially covered a three nautical mile radius over the site of the explosion and applied only to flights under 3,000 feet in altitude. Shortly after 5 p.m., it was reduced to two miles.

Only law enforcement aircraft or those involved in rescue operations are allowed in that airspace.

At 4:50 p.m., the airport said on Twitter that “the FAA has announced a ground stop for Boston Logan airport until further notice.”

Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the FAA, said the stop was in effect for only about 30 minutes and was needed to change the runway configuration “so planes would not be flying over the bomb site.”

Richard Wolf, a spokesman for Massport, which runs the airport, said it had little impact on airport operations.

“The airport is open. It has been open,” he said. “At this time we’re not seeing any delays.”

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.