Category Archives for Airports.
Teterboro, 12 miles northwest of Midtown Manhattan, is the primary private jet airport in the region. It has two runways, with runway 1/19 7,000 feet. There are around 200 takeoffs per day, making it the busiest airport for purely private operations in the U.S. About 55% of airport traffic is private jets, with the rest light jets, turboprops, and helicopters.
Why is it that we don’t trust airlines to get our checked bags to their destination – the old saying is that “there are two kinds of luggage, carry on and lost” – but we totally trust fellow passengers not to take our bags from baggage claim?
“Many bags look alike” and your bag could easily be taken by mistake, even assuming other passengers aren’t nefarious. When you don’t find your bag on the belt at baggage claim, you assume the airline lost it, rather than someone stole it.
The requirement of an ID to fly began as a ‘do something’ policy after the explosion of TWA flight 800. President Clinton demanded to be able to immediately announce new airline security measures, and told his National Security Council team to come up with some.
But it’s not clear that there’s any legal basis to deny air travel without first showing an ID.
Just before 1 a.m. on Monday, a man drove a golf cart on the moving walkway inside the terminal at Buffalo airport. He found an unattended airport cart with keys left in it. And he took it to use as if it were an amusement ride. He was arrested at the end of the walkway, once the ride was over.
Maybe the biggest failure in air travel is something we don’t talk about at all. How is it possible that people are being told to show up at the airport 2.5 to 3 hours before their flight, and that isn’t considered a failure of massive proportions?
Flying once used to be the province of the wealthy, and business men (definitely mostly men, United Airlines even used to have ‘Men Only’ flights) but now it’s become far more democratized. Airline deregulation brought lower fares, and the U.S. has become far wealthier. At the same time, being able to fly is an immense privilege.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby loves to tout his airline’s superior performance to American Airlines. He became United’s President 9 years ago after being fired from American. In a set of slides he rubs salt in the wounds over his airline’s relative growth in size and financial performance at Chicago O’Hare, where both airlines operate hubs.
American wasn’t able to get a temporary restraining order in federal court to stop this process. They voluntarily dismissed the federal claim last week and re-filed in Cook County Chancery Court.
TSA lifted the requirement to remove shoes at security checkpoints. But they may not be done.
A single person accounted for half the noise complaints about LAX. Three people accounted for 88% of LAX noise complaints. And guess what? There’s actually a button that automates noise complaint submissions about airports.
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 »
