Category Archives for Airlines.
A woman on Southwest Airlines may have set a record by occupying 13 seats prior to departure. She boarded early and saved seats for 12 other passengers – four rows of seats seats apiece.
On Friday, United Airlines flight 59 from Frankfurt to San Francisco had to turn around when a toilet overflowed. The Boeing 777-300ER was at 30,000 feet around 70 nautical miles northwest of Amsterdam when pilots asked to enter a holding pattern to troubleshoot the lav. Half an hour later they turned back.
Apparently one of the lavatory toilets “overflowed” and what was called “the soup” spilled into the cabin, with an unbearable stench.
According to data from Cirium, the price of U.S. domestic airfares are up 9% versus 2019, while inflation is up 19%. That means tickets are cheaper in real terms.
If Jimmy McMillan had been a resident of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, he might have declared the airfares are too damned high!. Politicians in Guam and Saipan have figured out that you never lose by taking on the cost of air travel. And, they complain, that “[a] roundtrip ticket from Saipan to Guam can cost up to $580 on United Airlines. That’s more expensive than some tickets from the Marianas to destinations in Asia.”
The government of Brazil is working to engineer a three-way merger between LATAM, Gol, and Azul. The objective seems to be for the government to save money on subsidies and bailouts with a single dominant carrier.
Emergency services responded to the aircraft in order to treating multiple passengers on-site for injuries from the turbulence. Six people were transported to a local hospital. Other passengers called it like a “roller coaster” and a “Six Flags” ride.
The airline’s founding was all about its refusal to fly out of DFW airport. Their intra-Texas model depended on short commutes to the airport. The DFW Metroplex has evolved substantially over the past 50 years, and Dallas – Fort Worth it itself a closer airport to much of the population.
And Southwest can’t grow at Love Field anymore, in part because no one can given the reduction in gates there that handed the carrier a near-monopoly. So DFW growth now makes sense, and they’re likely to jump in just as soon as they’re able.
The Essential Air Service program was created in the late 1970s as a temporary measure to soften the blow of deregulation. It provided for a ’10 year transition’ period in which small community service could receive subsidies. And it’s the perfect example of the old axiom that there’s nothing as permanent in life as a temporary government program. The program was supposed to end in 1988.
Instead, the Senate’s FAA reauthorization bill includes a tripling of funding for the program going forward.
American Airlines has changed one policy that made it difficult to go legit, pay the fee, and keep fido or fifi in under the seat in front of them. American will no longer require you to forfeit your full-sized carry-on bag when flying with a pet in cabin.
They will no longer need to gate check 1 million passenger bags per year, across 150,000 flights operated by these aircraft.
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 »
