News and notes from around the interweb:
- Luggage Made From Recycled Airplane Seats Might Just Be Indestructible (HT: Paul H.)
- oneworld member Qatar Airways says they will buy up to a 10% stake in oneworld carrier LATAM. They already are the largest single shareholder of IAG, parent of oneworld airlines British Airways and Iberia (as well as Vueling and Aer Lingus). Of course public statements by Qatar should always be discounted.
IAG Ownership Table - You can buy tickets on British Airways and pay only a deposit, with the balance due 5 weeks prior to departure. This means you can lock in space and a prior while only risking your deposit. That may be much better than getting stuck with a big change fee and flight credit (at best).
- How (and how often) airplane lavatories are cleaned
- A creepy tactic if Delta is watching you board other airlines and taking notes: It looks like Delta has stationed an employee with a clicker to count the number of passenger boarding Qatar’s flight.
- JetBlue and Hawaiian oppose approval of Delta’s joint venture with Aeromexico on the grounds that joint ventures in the past have always first required an OpenSkies agreement be in place between the two countries involved. Their position is anti-trust immunity shouldn’t be granted where are there legal impediments to outside competition.
- Some classic testy exchanges between pilots and air traffic control.
Failing to see how DL putting an employee nearby to count is ‘creepy’.
sounds pretty smart on DL’s part, to me. and how is that creepy? what’s creepy is ol’ buddy filming the agent while talking to her. and recording in vertical format instead of horizontal/widescreen.
It’s just creepy to have Delta watching passengers board with how vindictive they’ve been about the flight.
Given the way that Delta has monitored who has done business with Qatar and attempted to punish where possible, if you’re based in Atlanta and have any connection to the airline at all you’d better not be seen getting on that flight. Delta is watching.
The only weird part for me is that they had a uniformed Delta employee versus someone in plain clothes. Why not a more demure counter? Corporate espionage is nothing new. You think Disney doesn’t send some of its employees to Universal, counting how many people are riding the new Harry Potter rides?
@Gary Leff
The DOT publishes passenger counts (through their T100-F data set) for foreign carriers arriving/departing the US. This is segment level, not itinerary level, data. So I guess my point is that Delta is wasting their time or trying to “make a show” or something, because this data is already available.
@Dan – I’d guess DL thinks there might be something fishy about the reported pax count on those flights. I have no idea whether the number can be fudged. Qatar obviously has quite a reputation of providing less-than-accurate financial information.
Why is this creepy? Who cares if someone’s counting people?
What’s creepy is Delta’s embedded ads in websites. They come up with volume and no way to pause them. You just have to mute and look elsewhere on the page. Ugh.