I earned my first airline-mileage-award ticket in 1990 and have been fairly successful in obtaining many award tickets since then for the dates and routings I’ve needed.

A friend who is a member of an airline’s frequent-flyer-mileage program recently had a problem booking an award ticket 10 months out from when she wanted to travel. She had already done the first step, checking the airline’s website, but with no luck. I gave her the following advice, and I hope it...

Since Spain wraps around much of Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula, it’s easy to assume the two countries would be very much alike. My wife, Paula, and I have visited Spain twice, but we visited Portugal for the first time during our August 2017 trip to Spain, and we found the cultures and experiences to be quite different. 

Here are a few things you’ll find.

• The languages are surprisingly different. The written versions of the languages are more...

For our Icelandair flight from Reykjavik (Keflavik), Iceland, to Seattle, Washington, on July 21, 2017 (following a 10-day cruise around Iceland), we were among a couple hundred people who checked in, made it through security and were in our seats before the takeoff time of 5 p.m. The plane then sat at the gate for one hour waiting for three more passengers. 

When asked, flight attendants stated that the airline’s policy was to wait for people who had checked in but had not...