Category Archives for Airlines.
Alaska Airlines is introducing permanent luggage tags you can affix to your bags that speed up the check-in process. Passengers with these tags won’t have to print bag tags at the airport. Instead they will “activate the devices from anywhere—their home, office or even car—up to 24-hours before their flight through [Alaska’s] mobile app.”
The numbers of known cases almost certainly are massively understating the number of actual cases at this point, even asymptomatic infection possibilities aside. Nonetheless the number of infections in absolute terms is almost certainly very small, so most people are very unlikely to come into close physical contact with someone that’s infected.
I do not consider myself at risk at this time and I am not taking precautions, although I regularly update my priors based on new information. As the facts change, I can change my mind. However the precautions taken earlier in the pandemic, such as extensive housekeeping, not only appeal to my previously-held preferences they seem better-suited to monkeypox and numerous other pathogens than to Covid-19.
You can now choose the level of protection you’re comfortable with when flying, and in most areas of life, but there’s generally no longer a mandate for how others must protect you. For those at high risk that increases the need for good quality masking.
Everything works well when routes don’t get cancelled and schedules don’t change in ways that make connections impossible. But when you are working through one airline to travel on another, things can go wrong. Here’s what to do about it.
A recent award travel horror story shared to Reddit seems like a great opportunity for flagging some of the risks and complexities in travel and how to handle them.
Air travel connects the world. People fly for a purpose. They’re visiting friends and family, attending to important business, and connecting. Sometimes they connect with each other, through the randomness of seat assignments. And sometimes it’s the little connections with employees along the way, because it’s one human helping out another and taking a moment engage as people.
Seven moments shared to social media with photos or video stood out to me in just twenty four hours, showing that in a single day there’s a lot of good in the air, and on the ground.
A family of 9 passengers says that American Airlines ran a schedule change, and rebooked their return flight from a different country without telling them. They checked their seat assignments online – it’s always important to garden your reservations and check that nothing has changed – and found that their return trip was all wrong (and they weren’t sitting together on the wrong flights, either!).
Three months ago a South African Airways Airbus A330 from Accra, Ghana to Johannesburg reported both engines surging while over Botswana. The aircraft, with 209 people on board, continued the final 50 minutes to Johannesburg even as surges continued on final approach.
Reportedly the airline had just changed fuel suppliers in Accra. And after water had been drained from the fuel system, the aircraft was signed off for a ferry flight back to South Africa – with no passengers – but a full complement of passengers was loaded anyway.
Delta just cares about its customers so darned much and wanted to fly them when they were interested in travel again so the airline ‘stretched’ and pushed themselves too darned hard. Now they need to give themselves a break, not hold themselves to the same standard of flying so many trips, in order to sort things out.
Here Bastian is just like the job candidate who answers the question, “what’s your greatest weakness?” with “I work too hard, and don’t focus enough on outside interests.”
American Airlines makes companion upgrades free starting Thursday. That’s officially the end of 500 mile electronic upgrades (‘stickers’).
If you have any 500 mile upgrades left in your account they’ll each be converted to 250 status-qualifying Loyalty Points. However if you have any purchased 500 mile upgrades in your account you should contact American and ask to have them converted to 5000 redeemable miles instead.
Introducing the Thompson Vantage XL seat in 2016 was fantastic in 2016 when doors in business class was still a novelty. In 2022 it’s… okay, but something of an also-ran. The seat is tight. Not quite as tight as United’s Polaris, but certainly not spacious either. In terms of passenger space it compares unfavorably to American Airlines.
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 »
