Southwest Airlines flight 3278 almost took off from a taxiway at Orlando International Airport at around 9:30 a.m. on Thursday. The Boeing 737-800 was flagged down by air traffic control as it approached 70 knots according to ADS-B data before hitting the brakes.
Approximately 1,300 arrivals and departures were cancelled with flights enroute to Heathrow turned back around or diverting elsewhere because the airport couldn’t accept them. According to data from aviation analytics company Cirium, as many as 145,000 passengers could be affected based on scheduled seats and flights.
If you’re in the aisle seat, especially, you need to offer to get up whenever a passenger needs access. That’s part of the deal of the aisle seat. You have more direct access to the lavatory, but you need to grant access to others.
A guest at Marriott’s Courtyard Battle Creek in Michigan discovered a lewd drawing on the wall-mounted toiletries that was presumably left by a previous guest.
Housekeeping either doesn’t clean and refill the bottles, or saw it and didn’t care enough to change them out when turning the room. Since the guest reports that showing a photo to the front desk elicited a shrug, either option seems equally likely.
Are all of the changes Southwest Airlines is making too much, too fast? Not for the passengers who have been largely negative on this like checked bag fees and basic economy restrictions, one thing after another taken away from customers with nothing really added that makes life better.
Here what I’m troubled by is whether they’ve taken on too many projects to quickly in order to actually pull them off without significant service disruptions and customer inconvenience.
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.
Everyone is mad mad at Southwest Airlines for abandoning its business model, customer focus, and core principles. They’re laying off employees, outsourcing, eliminating free checked bags, moving to (paid) assigned seats and devaluing Rapid Rewards.
So now is the perfect time for another airline to go after their customers aggressively, court them, and win them over. American Airlines is doing that – but just isn’t really telling anyone about it?
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.
We now know something about what routes will see these new planes first. Aviation watchdog JonNYC says that the plan is for the plane to operate domestically Chicago to Los Angeles and back, before going into international service on the Chicago – London Heathrow route.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was photographed flying first class on Tuesday with fellow Vermont Senator Peter Welch. Many people online are calling the self-described socialist Sanders a hypocrite for flying in a premium class of service, while the working classes suffer coach.
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 »
