ROCK BOTTOM FARES You get what you pay for

As we wrote yesterday, a new airline in Canada is hoping to shake up travel next month by offering rock-bottom fares. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s one more step down on the ladder of travel experiences. As the New Leaf Travel website says, “Your fare gets you the two essentials: a seat and a seatbelt. The rest is up to you.”

The federal border agency's new system for scrutinizing incoming air passengers could open the door to profiling based on race or other personal factors, warns Canada's privacy czar. Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien is pressing the Canada Border Services Agency to explain the programme's rationale and build in safeguards to protect civil liberties.

How can they eat and drink so much, so often, so late, and stay svelte? And awake? “Nobody goes to bed in Madrid until they have killed the night,” remarked Ernest Hemingway in his book, Death in the Afternoon. Indeed, those Madrileño nighthawks proudly call themselves los gatos (cats).

Tourism development is a priority for 2016 in St Kitts, with Prime Minister Timothy Harris offering improvements that include a second cruise pier and the construction of new hotels within the next two years including Koi Resorts, Park Hyatt, Radisson and Embassy Suites.

Marketing It has been a record-breaking year to date for inbound tourism numbers and spend to the UK and growth looks set to continue in 2016 according to forecasts from national tourism body VisitBritain.

Malaysia Airlines on Wednesday lifted a much-criticized ban on checking in baggage on flights to Paris and Amsterdam, a day after limiting bags to lighten the plane and save fuel.

The most powerful storm yet in a series of El Nino storms pushed onto the California coast Wednesday as police and outreach teams kept an eye on riverbeds where thousands of the city's homeless live and would be vulnerable to flash flooding.

A new Winnipeg based air carrier planning to offer "ultra-low-cost travel" will announce its fares, routes and booking details today at airport press conferences in Winnipeg, Hamilton, and Kelowna. NewLeaf Travel Company will offer non-stop flights from those cities to multiple destinations.

Is Cuba’s rising travel trade a threat to leading Caribbean destinations? That depends on whom you ask. Until recently, the détente between the United States and its longtime foe had generated more headlines than actual tourism business; in fact, tourism from the United States to Cuba is still verboten under the existing trade embargo.

Malicious acts surpassed accidents as the chief cause of airline deaths worldwide in 2015 for the second year in a row, according to an industry tally. There were only eight accidental airline crashes last year accounting for 161 passenger and crew deaths - the fewest crashes and deaths since at least 1946.

Air Canada has asked the country's top court to overturn a Quebec ruling that would require the airline to keep its maintenance operations in the country. In its legal filing with the Supreme Court in Ottawa, Air Canada said that the appeal court's ruling “jeopardizes” the main objective of privatizing the formerly government-owned airline - to create a “viable and competitive company.”

Mahendran Sivakolunthu was charged with one count of operating as a travel agent without registration, contrary to the Travel Industry Act, 2002. Sivakolunthu operated in Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario.