Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

Something Else to Panic About at 30,000 Feet | When you boarded a plane in the old days, you might have worried about a terrorist storming the cockpit, a mid-air mechnical problem of some sort, or even a drunk pilot passing out behind the controls. Yea, well, there's officially a new danger in the sky: Your pilot could be too busy surfing porn on the web or watching videos on YouTube to realize he's missed your destination. More

Get Ready to Spend 12 Hours in the Des Moines Airport | Brace yourselves. The nation's airlines and airports are about to get even more dysfunctional. The downturn in the economy has forced airlines to slash their flight schedules and swap out larger planes with smaller ones, which means you can now look forward to longer delays and even more crowded flights this fall. The silver lining: Bathrooms on planes still exist for the time being, even though at least one airline has figured out that it can save a few bucks if it gets you to do your business before you get on board. [WSJ, NYDN]

Vegas Returns to Its Roots | You may once again consider Las Vegas the place to go to make all your midget stripper dreams come true. After experimenting with a series of new (rather uninspired) new slogans ("Vegas right now!"), the recession-ravaged city has decided to return to the tried-and-true tagline of "What happens here, stays here." [LV Sun via Daily Finance]

Happy Travels! | One more great thing about plunging earnings, rampant unemployment, and the nation's overall economic malaise: If you're traveling this Labor Day weekend, you can expect to find airports and roads a lot less congested! Air travel is expected to fall 20 percent this year compared to last, and the AAA is predicting a 13 percent drop in the number of people taking road trips. [AP, DF]

Glamping Your Way Through a Recession | You've heard of the "staycation." One more travel trend that is now benefiting from the recession, at least according to spin doctor Mark Penn: glamping. For people who don't have any interest in going camping and actually roughing in, but can't really afford to stay in a $650 a night hotel room in Europe for a week, glamping—or glamorous camping—is all the rage, Penn says. More

Interested in trading New York City for, say, Paris, but don't have the cash to buy a plane ticket? No problem! Pretend you're homeless and the City of New York will gladly pay for it:

The Bloomberg administration, which has struggled with a seemingly intractable problem of homelessness for years, has paid for more than 550 families to leave the city since 2007 ...

One More Great Honor For NYC | A couple of weeks after turtles managed to disrupt flights at JFK for more than an hour and a half comes more bad news for the city's biggest airport: According to a new poll of 6,200 travelers, JFK is the third-worst airport to sleep in. If you live in NYC and thus have no reason to ever sleep at JFK, be thankful. If you do live here and you're traveling to Moscow (No. 2) and Paris (No. 1), be sure to leave yourself enough time between connecting flights. [NYDN]

Pets In Flight | And you thought one of the silver linings of the economic downturn was that it was sending really silly companies out of business. Pet Airways, the "first-ever all-pet airline," took off from Republic Airport on Long Island for the first time today. The airline, which plans to operate in five U.S. cities, is now offering one-way tickets for about $250. The perks, however, are hard to beat. Pets get escorted to the plane by attendants who will check on the animals every 15 minutes once they're in the air. The pets are given pre-boarding walks and bathroom breaks, and there's even a "Pet Lounge" at the airport for "future fliers to wait and sniff before flights." If your dog has been begging to get away from his/her owner for little summer getaway, consider yourself fresh out of excuses. [AP]

Exciting news! For the ninth year in a row, Travel & Leisure has named New York the "Best City in America." It's the magazine's readers—not its editors—who determine the rankings. And clearly we have a ways to go if we have any chance of winning the title of "World's Best City." NYC came out just eighth on that list. The winner? Udaipur, India. Naturally. [NYDN]

Blame the Turtles | Did you fly in or out of Kennedy Airport this morning and find yourself delayed for a good hour and a half or so? There's a good explanation for that. One of the runways was shut down after a pilot reported running over some turtles, and wildlife control workers later had to remove 78 diamondback turtles who'd positioned themselves on the runway because they were "looking for friends of the opposite sex. Yes, it's turtle mating season. And, yes, turtles were responsible for screwing up your schedule today. [NYP]

You might want to inspect your bill closely the next time you stay at a hotel. Thanks to the plunging economy and the decline in travel, hotels have come up with all sorts of ingenious new ways to make money, as you may have noticed. Take, for example, the pool or exercise room that you had no intention of visiting anyway. You may end up seeing a "facility free" or "resort fee" appear on your bill, even though you went to Denver on a business trip, not to swim laps, and you've never heard anyone even use the words "resort" and "Denver" in the same sentence. You're perfectly aware that drinking a miniature-sized can of soda from the mini-bar will end up costing you $10. These days, though, you may also get slapped with a $1 "mini-bar restocking fee," which accounts for the 3.2 seconds or so it took someone to replace that $10 can of soda you just consumed.More

Airlines Cut Back... Again | We realized the airlines were hurting, sure, but now they're getting a bit ridiculous. Northwest plans to save money by no longer providing passengers with spoons—just forks and knives—while other airlines are planning to reduce the size of the cutlery in an effort to contain costs. On the bright side, since most airlines don't actually feed you anymore, you probably won't notice the difference. [Telegraph via Recessionwire]

Andrew and Daniel Recharge the Batteries | What do party fixtures Andrew Saffir and Daniel Benedict have planned this weekend? Glad you asked! "Memorial Day weekend we divide our time between the South of France for the fin of the Cannes Film Festival and the fin of an all-American East Hampton holiday weekend. While I'd like to say we will be going to an endless array of barbecues, clambakes and Summer kick-off parties, we're more likely to be asleep on the beach nursing our exhaustion from eleven consecutive 3 a.m. nights of rosé and Bellini-soaked parties and trop de Croisette carrousing." [FWD]

Alexander Maryasin has a rather active imagination. The Queens man says he used his American Express Black Card to book a vacation to Sardinia with his son, but was taken hostage for two weeks at the hotel Amex recommended, so he's now suing American Express and the hotel for the horrific treatment they were forced to endure. Maryasin says he used the exclusive card to book a trip to Hotel Cala di Volpe, one of Italy's most expensive resorts. But when he and his son arrived to check in, their passports were confiscated and they were forced by hotel staffers—at gunpoint—to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars shopping at boutiques around town, charges that were conveniently placed on his Amex card. Even more disturbing? To add insult to injury, Maryasin says the hotel staff pushed him into the pool, too. More

Sky Nannies | Remember Madlyn Primoff, the lawyer who abandoned her two daughters on the side of the road because she couldn't deal with them fighting in the backseat of the car? If she takes a plane trip in the near future, she might want to consider flying Gulf Air, if possible. The airline has introduced sky nannies, who will keep your kids occupied while you doze off or guzzle miniature bottles of vodka. [Transracial]