Monthly Archives for June 2020.
The independent Association of Professional Flight Attendants represents cabin crew at American Airlines. They have been dysfunctional for years and to Sara Nelson, the supposed ‘most powerful flight attendant in America,’ they look like a juicy target for her Association of Flight Attendants which is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America and AFL-CIO.
Air travel hit bottom April 14, with just 87,534 people clearing TSA security checkpoints in the United States. TSA data shows that Monday, June 22 exceeded 600,000 people – for the first time since March 19.
Maybe airlines could reward passengers with frequent flyers for mask wearing, if they’re refusing to serve alcohol to limit payment transactions they could comp alcoholic beverages to people who wear masks (though the masks have to be taken off to drink them). Maybe it’s time for a carrot as well as the toothless stick?
One man couldn’t handle Hawaii’s mandatory quarantine on arrival. Ten days in he hit the ocean, and that’s where he died. The 39 year old man, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, was found by a fisherman at Diamond Head near Honolulu.
Starting Tuesday LAX airport will begin to do temperature screenings at the Tom Bradley International Terminal as people enter the airport and in the arrivals corridor using thermal imaging cameras. This is similar to what I’ve experienced, for instance, in Hong Kong for over 15 years.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Hyatt is offer 20% off plus breakfast for loyalty program members, adding to an aggressive drive to put heads in beds that includes triple points and cancelling stays up to 24 hours prior to check-in.
On June 8th American Airlines eliminated iSolve, the tool frontline employees used to compensate customers for things like broken seats and missing meals. Instead they told employees to ‘de-escalate the situation’ and make customers happy – as long as they gave them nothing.
On June 16th, it turns out, they pulled the plug on paper compensation vouchers as well. And in the worst of corporate doublespeak, they’re telling employees they did this “to provide consistency for our customers.” No matter what the channel is, you get nothing!
TSA is rolling out the “Credential Authentication Technology” (CAT) tool broadly. They check both the authenticity of the document and whether the information matches what they have for the passenger’s ‘Secure Flight’ data in their reservation (name, date of birth, gender). If it isn’t a match, the passenger is sent over to the airline to get things sorted.
However since passengers no longer need a boarding pass when this system is in use, they’re proceeding past the security checkpoint without first checking in for their flight
When this became available last year for AAdvantage, and with other airlines rolling this out to reservations, I’d just assumed American was already doing this for secure flight. It surprised me to see they only just rolled it out.
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 »
