Catch up on the latest stories from the Elliott Report

Frontier Airlines baggage fees: When the sizer says yes but the agent says no
Benjamin Khoury measured his carry-on before a Frontier Airlines flight from Dallas to Phoenix and photographed it sitting inside the gate sizer. Frontier charged him $99 for an oversized personal item, then spent three months not answering questions about the photo.

Analog travel: why film cameras and paper maps are back
Bob Gourley shot a trip to Muscat, Oman, on 36 frames of film and hired a travel advisor instead of booking it himself. New research from ALG Vacations found that among travelers who use AI to plan a trip, about 77 percent still want a human making the final call.

A maintenance delay is the airline’s problem. That’s about to change.
A Transportation Department rule taking effect Oct. 19 moves 10 causes of delay and cancellation out of the airline’s column in federal reporting, and unscheduled maintenance is on the list. Europe answered the same question in 2008 and answered it the other way.

An air travel watchdog woke up after three years. It wants to bark at posters.
A federal advisory committee that hasn’t met since January 2023 returns on Sept. 22 with three items on its agenda, all of them disclosure documents Congress already ordered. It won’t vote on a single recommendation, and none of the consumer protections the Transportation Department rolled back while the committee was dark made the list.

These New Zealand eco-lodges are redefining sustainability (and reaching for the stars)
Two lodges at the head of Lake Whakatipu on New Zealand’s South Island have pushed sustainability well past recycled materials and refillable soap dispensers. One generates more power over a year than it uses and sends all of its profit to a community trust, and the other is wiring an 1868 pioneer tavern into a 500-kilowatt solar microgrid.

Help! Amazon said “yes” to a $179 refund—and then it said “no”
Andrew Greenman bought $179 sneakers from a third-party seller on Amazon and injured his ankle before he had worn them out. An Amazon agent emailed him a written promise of the money back within 48 hours, and the company’s executive customer relations office later ruled that its own agent’s promise didn’t comply with policy.

Why did Dollar charge me $1,858 for a car they didn’t have?
Dennis Drake returned a Jeep Compass to Dollar at the Albuquerque airport and flew home to Texas the same afternoon. Dollar’s system logged the car as still out, and the bill that followed came to $1,858 on top of insurance he had declined at the counter.

I’m reporting this week from Freiburg, at the edge of Germany’s Black Forest, where September has turned out to be the month nobody talks about. The tourists have gone home and the university isn’t in session yet. Where do you go when you want the shoulder season to yourself? Come tell us on Backchannel.