Austin Airport Slapped For Trying To Steal Land That It Already Owns [Roundup]

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • Austin airport sought to use eminent domain to take land they already own – the South Terminal, which they leased to a private company to build. If they’re allowed to use eminent domain to terminate a contract they no longer like, then there’s no way to trust the city in any deal that involves making a long term investment.

    A court special commission ruled that the city should pay $90 million, not the $2 million they’d offered. The city will presumably appeal.

    The South Terminal operator also has a lease clause that gives them the right to participate in airport expansion, too. Does terminating the lease for the land the Austin airport wants to take back terminate all provisions of the lease? We’ll see in a separate lawsuit.

  • Italy’s ITA Airways is not pronounced I-T-A Airways, it’s pronounced like it’s a word?

  • New complimentary baby and kids toys on Air France

  • New commercial for the Turkish Miles & Smiles program.

  • Oy. Remember when the national security establishment wanted all laptop batteries in the cargo hold of planes?

  • When I saw the story about Southwest reimbursing someone for the used car they purchased after their flight was cancelled over the holidays, is it weird that my first thought was the tax consequences since really Southwest bought them a car? And a $500 car actually drove well enough to make the trip.

  • More onboard milestone recognition from United Airlines

  • American Airlines legacy Airbus A320s – from US Airways and America West – were never updated. Their interiors are trash.

About Gary Leff

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 »

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  1. That’s such a ridiculous question re: “what I can see” on the 320 – obviously a banged up seat is not a safety issue, the plane can fly perfectly fine with the seats like that. It’s not optimal for optics/customer comfort, but does this passenger really think the flight should be cancelled to address the condition of the seat?

  2. America West was Americas Worst is what I call it. They always were the cheapest on airfare, but they were so bad that my then company changed the travel policy if the cheapest is Americas Worst, you can ignore that airfare as being the lowest.

  3. Reluctantly I switched back to AA after several years as UA1K. Mainly due to being based in Dallas and my travel patterns make it hard to avoid AA. Although I far prefer the IK experience over ExPlat, the UA connex via IAH, DEN and ORD to secondary cities simply do not work very well.

    Hope these old USAir / AW Airbus junkers are the exception rather than the rule.

  4. The AA 737-8/800, A321 and A319 domestic workhorses a well maintained (yes there are exceptions) and comfortable aircraft. Would love to see the seat back device holders on the A319 and bigger bins but that refresh is rumored to be coming. The O L D A320s 90s to early 00 need to go the newer ones 2009 – 2012 are in much better shape and just need a little TLC or just retire the entire fleets. Everyone has back planes (DL 757 and UA 767) but sometime it’s just time to say good bye.

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