Category Archives for Airports.
Airlines and airports tell you to arrive at the airport 2 hours in advance for a domestic flight and 3 hours in advance for an international flight. And then during peak times they warn you to show up even earlier than that. This is insane.
A viral video from Kansas City International shows a Southwest gate confrontation escalating fast—until other passengers step in to separate people and escort the man away from the counter – weirdly dependent on bystanders instead of security.
A viral video shows a passenger collecting and stacking TSA bins after screening — and it’s reignited an airport etiquette fight. Some checkpoints expect you to bus your own tray, others tell passengers to leave them alone, and the germ factor makes the “helpful” move less appealing than it sounds.
An airline wanted $100 to check his bag, and a Danish traveler returning to Spain after a three-month vacation in Mexico didn’t have it — so he settled into Mérida’s airport and effectively made it his home. Trying to reach Havana for a separate ticket to Madrid he says expires January 11, he became a quiet fixture in the terminal until staff started calling him the “Danish Tom Hanks.”
Millions have watched the same gut-punch: a checked suitcase rolls onto the baggage claim carousel already popped open, dumping clothes out in public while everyone stares. It’s a perfect illustration of why checking bags is a time tax and a trust exercise you usually lose—so pack lighter, keep what matters with you, and treat anything you do check as disposable.
A full-time TSA officer at Boston Logan is accused of collecting $47,526 in pandemic unemployment over 16 months while still working at the airport. Prosecutors say he repeatedly filed weekly certifications claiming he had no income, and he’s now charged with wire fraud.
Cases like this have surfaced repeatedly among TSA screeners, highlighting how pandemic programs prioritized speed and access—and made fraud easier to attempt and slower to catch.
A group of students and parents showed up at a Florida airport to confront a travel agent accused of scamming families out of a long-planned Europe trip. As he arrived under escort, the students yelled “Scumbag” while he came down the arrivals escalator—an encounter families described as cathartic, even as many are still out significant money.
Airports are replacing agents with biometric e-gates, and boarding increasingly means one thing: an unobstructed face scan matched against your passport photo and the flight manifest. A viral clip of veiled women being told to uncover at the gate got cheered for all the wrong reasons—but the real story is how “biometric exit” normalizes government face-matching as a condition of travel, and how simple accommodations can handle identification without turning it into a spectacle.
Airlines enforce the 50-pound limit with baggage scales that aren’t always perfectly calibrated—so some passengers have started “helping” the reading by quietly supporting one side of the suitcase with a foot while it’s being weighed. The number drops because part of the bag’s weight transfers off the scale, and influencers even promote it as a tip. It’s also fraud, and agents say they see (and cringe at) it all the time.
Denver’s city council just voted to deny an airport lease because it didn’t like the airline’s ICE deportation work — a move that looks like unjust discrimination under the FAA grant assurances tied to federal airport funding. The vote doesn’t kick the carrier out, but it creates an obvious opening for the Trump administration to intervene through the FAA compliance process and put Denver’s federal money at risk.
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 »
