News and notes from around the interweb:
- British Airways is offering status matches to air berlin elites
- 78 new airlines started operations in 2017 but where are all the new US airlines? This is a problem.
- American’s LAX terminal 5 Admiral’s Club apparently has an avocado toast bar in the mornings “including avocado spread, hardboiled eggs, tomatoes, white cheese, and prosciutto or smoked salmon.”
Credit: lds89 - Construction on new central security for Washington National’s B and C terminals beginning soon with expected completion in 2020, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see this slip.
I do think getting rid of gate 35X as part of the project is a good thing (new commuter terminal) but I’m skeptical of combining security. One positive: during construction members of congress lose their special free airport parking.
- Thai Airways reiterates plan to add aircraft, fly to the U.S. with the obvious destinations of California and perhaps New York (they used to serve both Los Angeles and New York JFK). No date is yet offered.
- This is what happened when an Irish flight was delayed 2 hours. That’s how it’s done, people. (HT: Greg R.)
Gary, have you found any plans for the DCA renovation that are sufficiently detailed to show how pax will actually flow through the new security setup? I’ve dug through the project website and can’t find anything beyond the rendering that WTOP has in their article.
When the project first was proposed, how I remembered it being described was simply that they’d take the outdoor areas with the trees (shown in the picture in the WTOP article), enclose them, and make those the security areas. So nothing would change about the current ticketing setup; one would just go to the ends and through then down to the main (arrivals level) concourse, which would be fully airside. All of this would still be on the east side of the road.
However with the renderings here, I’m racking my brain to figure out how on earth people enter the security setup – does it involve crossing the road several times? Are pax dropped off on the left side of the road, where they enter that…thing? Is there really enough clearance between the arrivals and departures level to support a full story building? How does it interface with ticketing? An architectural drawing or two would be very handy…
The toast is fairly good, fwiw. It’s their stopgap measure until the Flagship lounge reopens. As far as I know, it’s been available since the T5 lounge opened.