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New York Times
08-07-2025
- New York Times
Did You Visit a National Park This Summer? Tell Us What You Saw.
This summer travel season kicked off with worries for anyone headed to a national park. A wave of firings and resignations shortly after President Trump took office depleted the ranks of permanent staff across the system, and seasonal hiring started much later than usual. All this meant reports of uncleaned toilets, closed trails and campgrounds, and long waits at popular sites. The chaos may have pushed nervous travelers to visit state parks or Canadian parks instead. If you still chose to go to a U.S. national park this summer, we want to know about your experience. Were there problems like overcrowding, cancellations or maintenance issues, or did you find things working smoothly? Please share the details of your experience with us, including photos and videos. We will look at all the responses and use some of them to put together a crowdsourced midsummer checkup of national parks. We won't publish your response or use photos or videos you submit without contacting you. If we do include your response, we will need to use your full name and city; we can't use pseudonyms or first names only. Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025.
New York Times
13-06-2025
- General
- New York Times
Is There a Safest Seat in a Plane Crash? We Asked Experts.
Suddenly, airline passengers around the world are wondering if there is something special about Seat 11A. That's where Viswash Kumar Ramesh, 38, the sole survivor of the Air India Boeing 787-8 that crashed after takeoff in Ahmedabad, India, on Thursday was sitting. Did the location of his seat help spare his life? Probably not, aviation experts said. There's nothing that makes that or any other seat safer than anywhere else on a plane, and they added, it's usually not worth trying to game out safety when selecting where to sit for a flight. 'If you're in a crash, all bets are off,' said Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board. 'So pick whatever seat you want to make you feel comfortable.' While conventional wisdom holds that the rear of an aircraft may be safer, that theory falsely assumes that the front of a plane will always make impact first in the event of a crash, Mr. Guzzetti said. 'You just can't predict crash dynamics.' Airlines use different configurations for different aircraft. On that Air India flight, Seat 11A was in an exit row on the left side, according to a seat map on SeatGuru. Sitting near an exit may allow passengers to escape more quickly in some circumstances, but Mr. Ramesh told India's state broadcaster that the right side of the aircraft was 'crushed against a wall,' preventing anyone else who may have survived the initial impact from escaping through the exit on that side. In an emergency like a fire, when 'you're still sitting on your landing gear and the airplane is pretty much upright and intact,' an exit row may offer the quickest path to safety, Mr. Guzzetti said. 'But with regard to the crash dynamics of an accident like Air India, I think it's just a matter of chance.' Shawn Pruchnicki, a former accident investigator at the Air Line Pilots Association and an assistant professor of aviation safety at Ohio State University, chalked up Mr. Ramesh's survival to 'purely luck.' 'In these types of accidents people just don't survive this close to the front, this close to fuel,' Dr. Pruchnicki said, referring to the fact that the fuel tanks on a Boeing 787 are mainly on the wings and in the fuselage between them. The crash on Thursday was the latest in a string of recent aviation disasters around the globe, including a midair collision in Washington in January, and crashes in South Korea and Kazakhstan in December, that have raised fears among some travelers about the safety of flying. Aviation experts say flying remains safe and that crashes, though high-profile, remain very rare. Christine Chung contributed reporting. Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025.
New York Times
29-04-2025
- New York Times
European Anti-Tourism Groups Plan June 15 Disruptions
Travelers to Europe, mark your calendars (and bring your raincoats). On June 15, activist groups across southern Europe are planning to stage protests against tourism. Although the precise form of those demonstrations has not been decided, it's a pretty safe bet that water guns will be involved. Last weekend in Barcelona, about 120 representatives from Venice; Lisbon; Palermo, Italy; and a dozen other cities joined leaders of the Southern Europe Network Against Touristification in calling for a coordinated day of action to raise awareness about what they called 'the urgent need to limit the growth of tourism.' The tactics discussed included marches, picketing at airports, obstructing tourists' entry to historic sites and blockading tour buses. Driven by rising rents, housing shortages, pollution and overcrowded public transportation, the call signals a continuation — and possibly an escalation — of the demonstrations that erupted across Europe in 2024. At a protest along Barcelona's famed Las Ramblas boulevard last July, a handful of participants pulled out water guns and began squirting tourists. The tactic attracted global media attention, which is why, this time around, the activists have adopted the toys as an effective symbol of their resistance. In Barcelona, where the municipal government has taken measures to reduce the impact of overtourism (the city received 15.5 million tourists in 2024), such as curbing new hotel construction and banning Airbnb after 2028, tourism officials greeted the news of the planned June 15 protests with dismay. 'It's unfortunate that global anti-tourism movements chose to announce their proposals in Barcelona, when Barcelona is the city that is doing the most for sustainable urban tourism,' said Mateu Hernández, director general of the Barcelona tourism office. With international travel expected to increase this year, the summer of 2025 looks likely to see other protests proliferate. Already, in the Canary Islands, a demonstration against tourism is scheduled for May 18, with organizers suggesting they will move beyond the kind of marches that brought 60,000 to the streets last year to also include occupying what they called 'symbolic' tourist sites. Participants in the Barcelona workshops capped their gathering with their own symbolic protest. On Sunday morning, the activists, some wielding water guns, met outside the Sagrada Família church (the city's most popular tourist attraction), surrounded a tour bus filled with passengers, and hung a banner announcing the June 15 demonstrations from its windshield. 'We don't want to hurt anyone,' said Elena Boschi, an English-language teacher and activist from Genoa, Italy. 'We just want them to be mindful of the impact that their presence is having on these places and the people who live in them.' Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025.
New York Times
19-03-2025
- New York Times
What's the Perfect Trip for Two Picky Travelers? Take the Quiz.
We all know that the right chemistry can make any vacation magic, and the wrong chemistry can ruin one. But what if the problem is not a clash of personalities, but rather the choice of destination and activity? With this idea in mind, we came up with four different traveler types, paired each of them and then combed though recent New York Times travel coverage to come up with options for destinations and activities that both travel types in each pairing might enjoy. We hope this quiz will help make your next trip fun and frictionless. Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025.
