COMING AND GOING

Bumped and Dumped

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UPRIGHT AND LOCKED

Bumped and Dumped

It was a rare flight for Ruth Littell, 87, who was traveling on Northwest Airlines from White Plains, N.Y., to Minneapolis to attend her granddaughter's wedding. But when she tried to board, Littell was told the flight was overbooked and she'd been bumped. She was handed a $300 voucher for a future flight and was told the airline could put her on a later flight that day from New York's LaGuardia airport.

"Fortunately, another bounced passenger helped her arrange transportation to LaGuardia, which Northwest paid for, and she arrived many hours after she was expected," granddaughter Joyce Smith of the District wrote CoGo.

Littell travels so infrequently that the voucher wasn't useful. Northwest initially declined the family's request that the voucher be transferred to a family member who could use it to visit Littell, perhaps to help her move into an assisted-living facility this summer. After being contacted by CoGo, spokeswoman Jennifer Bagdade agreed to make "a one-time exception."

What can we learn from this incident?

* Getting seat assignments in advance can help protect you from being bumped. According to Northwest, involuntary bumping is rare. But when people do need to be bumped, the airline chooses them "in reverse order of the time of check-in for passengers who were not holding a seat assignment."

* If you want a voucher, fine. But you are entitled to cash if you ask for it when bumped. Because Littell was delayed more than two hours, she could have asked for double the price of her one-way ticket, up to $400.

* Consider volunteering to give up your seat to infirm seniors and minors traveling alone.

Oh, and airlines? When you must bump someone, add another criterion to your selection process: Tell agents to pick on someone closer to their own age.

NEW FRONTIERS

Greenland Express

New flights from BWI to Greenland soon will take Americans to the most exotic destination within a five-hour flight of Baltimore.

Consider: Greenland is the world's largest island-- bigger than all of Western Europe combined -- but its population of about 56,300 is close to that of the Empire State Building on a workday. Dog sleds remain a major mode of transportation in this country, which is virtually without roads but has plenty of scenic lakes, fiords and glaciers, including a calving glacier that drops chunks of ice the size of a New York City block-- including all the buildings. Temperatures routinely reach the high 70s during the summer, and the sky is light most of the night.

Currently, you have to fly to Denmark or Iceland to connect to Greenland. But on Thursdays between May 24 and Aug. 30, and Mondays between June 11 and Aug. 20, Air Greenland will fly between Baltimore and Kangerlussuaq, a town of about 500 people but with a large airfield built by the United States during World War II.

Round-trip airfare starts at $1,100-- a sign of what lack of competition will do to prices.

Details: http://www.airgreenland.com/. Tourism info: http://www.greenlandtravel.dk/.

TRAVEL TICKER

Find 10,000 hot spots for fishing and boating in the United States at http://www.takemefishing.org/. The newly beefed-up site, operated by the nonprofit Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation, can be searched by state, county, city or Zip code. . . . Omni Hotels is phasing in the exclusive use of eggs from cage-free hens. In lauding the new policy, the Humane Society of the United States noted that hens raised in so-called battery cages are confined to spaces the size of a piece of stationery.

BARGAIN OF THE WEEK

Tahiti, Sweetie?

Fly nonstop from New York to Papeete, Tahiti, for $940 round trip (including $82 taxes). The Air Tahiti Nui deal is good for flights through May 22; some flights may be sold out. Fare on other airlines is about $2,058. Book no later than by May 4. Info: 877-824-4846, www.airtahitinui-usa.com.

Reporting: Cindy Loose

Help feed CoGo. Send travel news, road reports and juicy tattles to cogo@washpost.com. By mail: CoGo, Washington Post Travel Section, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071.

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