News and notes from around the interweb:
- Earn free Las Vegas comps from your computer
- Don’t fly during Ramadan A chilling tale of TSA, opting out, and what happens when the hand swab alarms.
- Last month Gordon Ramsey did a cook off against Singapore Hawker stalls… and lost. Apparently he did well with chili crabs, but his laksa fell flat. He graciously acknowleged the hawker chefs “kicked [his] a*se” (HT: Marginal Revolution)
- US Airways lost a motion to dismiss a lawsuit complaining that they award point-to-point mileage for flights instead of actual miles flown (if you take a circuitous route to avoid weather you should earn more miles since you’ve flown more miles).
I’ve always thought the better suit would be airlines that award 1 to 5 fewer miles per flight than the actual point-to-point distance, multiplied over every program member and every flight every day that could be a valuable class action that no individual is incentivized to litigate on their own.
- DeltaPoints interviews BoardingArea founder Randy Petersen
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Assuming he’s telling the truth about his ordeal, this is certainly a an example of how abusive, arrogant and obtuse our security apparatus can be. He should have a civil rights lawsuit.
My policy is never to draw attention to myself in any way when going through security. That means putting up with the obnoxious millimeter wave detectors.
I am Muslim, brown-skinned, and born and raised in the US, with a pure midwest accent. I am Platinum on Delta and United. I fly domestically and internationally. I have never had any negative experience at any airport security line. I’ve never had to have any “extra” or “random” checks, although there are plenty of stories out there. I’m not sure why the guy in the story opted out. This is all on him.
A chilling tale. I got pulled over at Heathrow when one of my tech items sparked interest. I was patted down, scanned again, and taken to another room with a window adjacent the security check point. I couldn’t figure out why. It turns out that my still clear plastic wrapped CD drive for the MAC Retina Pro bought in South Korea puzzled the agents since they had never seen one before. I offered to let them upwrap it and see that it was indeed a CD-Rom. After it was swabbed, I was permitted to continue on my way. This was the end of my ICN-FRA-LHR FC on Lufthansa with United FF miles.
Regarding lawsuits, I think there needs to be one about when airlines have the same flight number for connecting flights, and you only receive the mileage as if it were a direct flight. Even if you actually change aircraft!
Not trying to discourage anyone from MGM, but the prizes have gotten much worse and much more expensive. They sell out very, very quickly. Still, free is free…unless it’s a $75 credit toward a $150 purchase.