Monthly Archives

Monthly Archives for May 2016.

AMAZING FARE: $35 Base Fare Each Way Between US and Iran

May 22 2016

SecretFlying points to a roundtrip fare on Qatar Airways between Atlanta and Tehran for as little as $536.

The base fare on this itinerary is just $35.50 each way, the rest is all fuel surcharges and taxes. Interestingly, a roundtrip is at least $100 cheaper than a one-way to Iran. And it’s about half the price of a one-way to Doha. So there are interesting ‘throwaway’ opportunities here for someone wanting to travel just to the Mideast.

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TSA PreCheck Just Got Better — and How to Get it Free

May 21 2016

Airport security lines have become insufferably long. It’s costing both passengers(who can wait for hours at peak times) and airlines (when passengers miss flights and their seats aren’t used efficiently, plus they have unhappy customers).

While TSA PreCheck is no guarantee of a fast airport security experience, it’s usually a reliable way to get through in minutes rather than tens of minutes let alone an hour. And it’s just improved.

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American’s Pilots Have to Claim to Be Really Unhappy If They’re Going to Ever Be Happy

american airlines hangar
May 20 2016

American’s pilots claim to be unhappy.

This is important because although American and US Airways have merged, and from a customer-facing standpoint are a single carrier (albeit with very different legacy products that the airline is slow to update), work groups are not yet on the same system and pilots do not yet have a single seniority list that will allow the airline to function as one.

There are still planes attached to destinations and crews, and that prevents American from matching the right equipment to the right route and optimize aircraft so that expensive capital equipment gets the most efficient use possible as well. In other words, many of the merger’s promised synergies remain on the table.

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