Travel strategies help beat stress, survive airport

Beating travel stress. Business travelers often face tension while battling traffic and delays of all kinds in trying to reach their final destinations.

The National Headache Foundation, a nonprofit group, offers these tips for road warriors to help avoid headaches while traveling:

?Plan in advance to avoid last-minute stress.

Make to-do lists and get plenty of rest to prevent fatigue and irritation.

?Follow your diet. Certain eating habits, such as skipping meals and eating too much ripe cheese and chocolate are discouraged.

?Avoid alcohol. Drinking alcohol, which leads to dehydration, also causes headaches, especially aboard aircraft, where the recirculated air is very dry.

International corporate travelers, in particular, should be aware of the fact that altitude changes, climatic variations and time-zone shifts can play havoc with a headache medication dosage schedule.

Patients should consult with their doctors before taking medicine with them on long trips.

Airport survival. If you've traveled by air at all this summer you know that almost every flight is full, and that's likely to continue through the fall.

Here are a few tips to help make air travel go smoothly:

?Use curbside check-in. When it's available, check your bags curbside, take your tickets and boarding passes and walk right onto the plane. On flights that are seriously overbooked, you may be asked to check in again at the gate. Listen for announcements.

?Get to the airport early. Major airports have come a long way in recent years, and most are now like shopping malls with lots of things to do and plenty of nice restaurants.

And for the businessperson, there are even fully appointed business centers in major airports. The centers have computer hookups, fax machines, copiers and more.

Get there early, check in and enjoy a nice meal or get some work done.

At some airports you can even get a massage while you wait for you flight.

The upgrades at airports are one of the biggest benefits to travelers in recent years.

Take advantage of them.

FAA security upgrade. The FAA has proposed stepping up security procedures requiring airlines using aircraft with 61 seats or more on domestic flights to use automated baggage screening procedures.

FAA administrator Jane Garvey pointed out that the domestic airline industry over the past year has voluntarily implemented a program called Computer Assisted Passenger Screening. This program eliminates the majority of passenger baggage from consideration and allows airlines to concentrate on only those automatically selected by the system based on pre-programmed criteria.

For the most part, passengers won't know whether CAPS selected their checked bags, because the security measures nearly always take place behind the scenes, the FAA said.

Although air carriers with scheduled operations using aircraft of fewer than 61 seats will not be required to use CAPS, many regional airlines have implemented the automated screening program and more may do so in the future, the agency said.

The U.S. Department of Justice already has reviewed CAPS and determined the criteria it uses are not discriminatory by race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion or gender, or by such passenger traits as names or modes of dress.

Recovering a stolen laptop. If you have had your laptop computer stolen, you know the likelihood of recovering it is slim.

But that prospect has gotten brighter with the theft-prevention program called Micro-ID.

With this new technology, law enforcement can access hard drives and locate owner identification.

This program is available ftom New Technologies Inc.,

http://www.forensics-intl.com/theft.html.

Once you have this program, simply input basic owner information, including the serial number.

This data is entered on your hard drive and is accessible through a special companion program called Cop-Only, which is available to law enforcement agencies.

(Marvin McDaniel, CTC, is president of Carlson Wagonlit Travel/Carlson Travel Network.)