Today at the Fresno airport I had the interesting experience of being told by the Delta/Sky West ticketing agent that I had a seat assigned on the flight to Salt Lake City but no ticket.  He seemed fairly flummoxed by the situation and as he started typing furiously to try and find the lost ticket (who knew one could get a seat without one?) I mentioned that I had been rerouted several times in the past few months for this vacation. But since I hadn’t brought any of the Northwest emails, we had no ability to trace the changes. The agent finally retrieved the ticket when I mentioned that one of the rerouted options was “really early in the morning” and all was resolved.  He attributed the mix up to the fact that Delta and Northwest’s reservations systems aren’t completely in synch yet. Moral of the story: Be on the safe side and bring any official documentation of your flights with you to the airport.Â

Q: I’m traveling to Hawaii next winter. Should I buy my plane tickets now?

A: We called Tom Parsons, publisher of bestfares.com, to get his take on the constantly changing airfare scenario and how it could pertain to flights to and from Hawaii next winter. His advice? Wait.  “Hawaii is getting beaten up right now,” he said, referring to the global recession that’s keeping not only Americans but also the Japanese from dancing the hula. Rates from MSP to Honolulu for next winter are currently costing around $700 and Parsons thinks they are unlikely to go much higher. But if you wait a few months and monitor the fares every two weeks or so, you very well may come upon a bargain as the airlines try to fill their seats. At the very least, he advises travelers to wait until Southwest Airlines begins service to Denver (scheduled to start this May). That should lead to cheaper prices to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, where Hawaii-bound flights are much cheaper than what we Twin Citians usually pay.

Other tips: If you want a good fare, stay away from holidays and spring break.  Schedule departures on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Q: What are the rules for carry-on liquids?    A: It’s easy to forget these rules if you don’t travel all the time.  According to the Transportation Security Administration,  the key is to think 3-1-1.  That’s short for as many 3 ounce containers of non-flammable liquid or gels as can fit comfortably in a single one-quart, Ziploc-style bag.  What won’t make it through the screening? Any containers that are larger than 3 ounces but are not full, such as a mostly used  tube of toothpaste or a bottle of shampoo. If you must travel with those items, you need to put them in your checked luggage. Exceptions to these rules include breast milk and baby formula.Â

The email subject line didn’t look promising: Northwest Airlines Schedule Change. My husband and I are taking a trip to Yosemite in May and our flights to and from Fresno had been changed.  On the way to California, we were now going to have a six hour layover in Los Angeles. Worse still, our new flight back home was so early in the morning that we would have to leave the park in the middle of the night. Those changes would basically ruin our four day vacation.

We’d already been rerouted once for this trip, and my goodwill was exhausted. So I got on the phone and explained to the NWA agent who had the misfortune of answering my call that even though I knew he wasn’t responsible for this unacceptable situation, I was furious!  The guy didn’t have an easy task–the entire transaction to find two seats on flights that were closer to our original itinerary took over thirty minutes. But he was so gracious, I felt bad that I’d even slightly raised my voice.

Still, the experience made me wonder about rerouted flights. So I contacted Christopher Elliott, the Travel Troubleshooter guru,  to get his insights. “Normally, when you are being rerouted, it’s because of schedule changes,” he wrote in an email. Elliott said that when it comes to reroutings that don’t have to do with schedule changes, his sense is that when it comes to deciding whom the airlines are going to inconvenience, they start with the ones who pay the least and work their way up. That jibed with my observations.  Three years ago when my family was flying to Europe, Northwest tried to reroute my 4 and 7-year-old sons, who were the only members of our party traveling on frequent flyer miles. (The airline quickly put them back on our flight once they realized they wouldn’t be able to navigate the Amsterdam airport on their own.)

What are your rights if you  have been rerouted? It depends on the airlines “Contract of carriage,” the sprawling legal agreement between you and the airline, which each airline makes available online. I read through the contract on nwa.com and still couldn’t figure it out, so I called them. It turns out, had I not been satisfied with any of the options, Northwest would have refunded the entire cost of the ticket.

Have you been rerouted? How did it work out?

Q: For an upcoming trip to Vegas, is it better to pack my digital camera and mini dv camcorder in checked or carry-on bags? What about the DV tapes? Should they be in a foil pouch like my old 35mm roll film?

John Wawerswich

A: Great question. We asked Tom Sweeney, the Star Tribune photo editor for features and he assured us that security x-ray machines don’t harm digital cameras or digital camcorders, so you don’t need the foil pouches for the tapes. You can put your cameras in your carry-on bags without worrying that your memories of your trip could be ruined.

Let this YouTube video of a woman flipping out — and that’s putting it mildly —  after she was not allowed to board a departing Cathay Pacific flight be a cautionary tale. While losing your temper might get you an apology, it won’t get you on that plane.