News and notes from around the interweb:
- Allegiant’s reliability problems have really been centered on their MD-80 aircraft but those are almost gone from the fleet.
Hey avgeeks, @Allegiant says it will retire the last of its MD-80s “immediately” after the Thanksgiving travel period. Anybody planning a farewell flight?
— David Koenig (@airlinewriter) October 24, 2018
- Why are hotel sheets and towels white?
- Air France will allow customers to re-sell non-refundable tickets, taking a 50% cut. If an aftermarket is permitted, then why should Air France have a monopoly? And isn’t 50% price gouging? Seems like they could be opening up a can of worms here. Still I like it and hope the margin gets shaved in the future. I’d love to see competition among airlines over the terms under which customers can recoup the value of tickets they no longer plan to use.
- Atlanta airport is building much-needed pedestrian bridges, this solves the bad mix of cars and foot traffic that really slows down traffic flow. But they’ll cost $55 million which is insane.
- Woman tries to smuggle emotional support cat onto British Airways flight. Service dogs are permitted, cats are not permitted, but I still like this version of the explanation:
But this excuse did not convince crew who made it clear cats were not allowed to travel in the cabin unless they were recognised assistance dogs.
- Qantas will grow its business lounge and open a first class lounge in Signapore. Construction on the first lounge will begin in April.
Qantas First Class Lounge, Sydney - The challenging economics of ultra long haul flying. More crew adds cost and takes up space. You’re adding fuel, and that takes up weight. And you need more fuel to fly the extra fuel…
- Auckland Airport will employ 87 ‘queue combers’ to help keep people moving through check-in and security
- Korean Air hopes to fly to Pyongyang
I love that they actually studied the best color for hotel bedding and towels, and totally agree that white bedding makes a room feel cleaner!
What if her emotional support cat identifies as a dog? Sounds speciest.
@Gary: “why should Air France have a monopoly?” They don’t want a free secondary market to emerge in their tickets as that would remove their ability to set price in the primary market. Especially the ability to practice temporal price discrimination to accrue consumer surplus.
Re: Secondary market for tickets – Just wait until Ticketmaster gets involved. They will enable shadow brokers to buy up all of the available seats and then resell them to you at inflated prices. The airline will double dip by charging fees on the initial and subsequent purchase/transfers. Ticketmaster will get their cut as well.
Atlanta airport is insane. Get some new leadership in there pronto!
Before all hotels used white, I remember back in the 80s staying in a Hilton that used mustard yellow sheets. My cousin said he felt like a hot dog all night.