A woman and a child reportedly spent a six-hour flight in cockpit jumpseats after an oversold departure prompted the Air France KLM low cost subsidiary to look for volunteers to sit up front instead of in the cabin. The airline says it complied with European safety rules. Paying normal denied boarding compensation seems cheaper than the embarrassment here.
A passenger flying SAS from Copenhagen to Los Angeles after recent surgery says she wound up getting a 30-minute foot massage from a stranger in coach after an expected empty seat between them disappeared. It is an oddly kind story — three women who did not share a language improvising help for someone in pain — but it also crosses a line that most travelers would not want crossed on a plane.
Bilt says it expects to process more than $100 billion in housing payments this year. The real play is using housing relationships to power a broader payments, merchant, and loyalty network that can make the card just one piece of a much larger business.
There is one food airports should probably never be serving right before passengers board a plane, and somehow it keeps spreading: chili. Beans, sulfur, and changes in cabin pressure are already a bad combination at 30,000 feet, which makes airport chili counters and giant lounge bowls feel less like comfort food and more like a threat to everyone trapped in the cabin.
A JetBlue passenger says flight attendants on a Paris – New York flight gave her dry ice to treat swelling in her leg, and that the extreme cold burned her skin badly enough to trigger a lawsuit.This is exactly the kind of onboard accident the Montreal Convention is designed to cover.
A single overheated circuit board was enough to ground flights across five Washington-area airports, forcing controllers to evacuate Potomac TRACON and exposing just how fragile the FAA’s aging infrastructure has become. The deeper problem, though, is not one smoking board — it is an air traffic control system where routine maintenance on old equipment was reportedly allowed to slide, making breakdowns like this far more likely.
I’m not famous in any normal sense, but I have managed to achieve a very specific kind of travel notoriety: people recognizing me in airport lounges, hotel breakfast rooms, and even lounge restrooms. If you do spot me on the road, saying hello is always welcome, just maybe not at the urinal.
United rolled out new business class suites on its latest Boeing 787-9s, but the doors still have to stay locked because the seats are not fully certified yet. Also Bilt is refunding erroneous foreign transaction fees, Trump wants ICE to backfill TSA screeners, GHA Discovery paused points expiration through September 30, the infamous Asiana 214 fake pilot-name prank is back in circulation, and Spirit’s “new vehicle” takes transportation in a very different direction.
Chase has brought back the best-ever 200,000-point offer on the IHG One Rewards Premier Business card, giving small-business owners a shot at one of the richest hotel bonuses currently on the market. The card’s $99 annual fee is easy to justify if you value the annual free night and fourth-night-free perk, making this a rare hotel card offer that is strong both for the signup bonus and for keeping long term.
President Trump says ICE can fix shutdown-driven TSA lines starting Monday by moving agents into airports, but federal law does not allow ICE to simply take over checkpoint screening. Even if he tried, pulling immigration agents into TSA roles would weaken airport security while doing little to solve the staffing and training problem that caused the lines in the first place.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
