Category Archives for Airports.
U.S. Customs has seized cash from 13 travelers who were departing the United States just at Washington Dulles airport in the first six weeks of the year.
It’s widely known that you have to declare when you’re bringing over $10,000 in cash into the United States. You have to do the same when you’re leaving. Most people have no idea, and wouldn’t even know how to do it!
New York JFK’s terminal 1 appears to have caught fire and this is impacting operations somewhat.
An American Airlines Airbus A321 without passengers on board collided with a shuttle bus in Los Angeles on Friday evening. The plane was being pulled by a tug to park in a remote location, and the shuttle was carrying passengers between the American terminal and the remote ‘Eagles Nest’ building for regional flights.
The fire department treated five people at the scene. Four people were hospitalized.
Colorado updated its drivers licenses in February 2022, but the TSA hasn’t updated its drivers license readers to recognize the new design. As a result, people that have renewed their Colorado licenses over the past year keep getting flagged at airport security.
As if TSA screening isn’t enough of a mess in Denver, the preponderance of Colorado licenses makes things even worse, because the screener then has to identify the passenger without relying on the government ID.
There were procedural changes after the Air Canada near-miss landing on top of planes in San Francisco in 2017 but those changes do not seem to be followed in these two recent incidents between Delta and American and between Fedex and Southwest. In all cases, the planes continued to operate (though Delta not until the next day). As a result their cockpit voice recorders – which only capture the most recent two hours of data – were overwritten. But the FAA shouldn’t be allowing this.
FedEx freighter flight 1432 was cleared to land in Austin, while a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737, flight 708 to Cancun, was cleared to take off, using the same runway. The incident occurred around 6:40 a.m. on Saturday morning. Thankfully the FedEx plane pulled up and away, mere feet from landing on top of the passenger flight.
Airport terminals have been getting better. Arguably what were once the two worst terminals in the country – Tom Bradley International at LAX and New York LaGuardia’s Central Terminal – have been completely redone and both are gorgeous.
And airports are trying to provide more seating, and meet the needs of passengers to power their devices. Who needs lounges?
Data shows which cities added the most airline seats from 2019 to 2022, and which cities saw the greatest reduction in airline capacity. With managed corporate travel still down 25%, leisure destinations dominate.
CommuteAir, which operates Embraer ERJ-145s for United Airlines, left the entire U.S. federal No Fly List on a server that was easily hacked.
I ran into a retail shop at the Austin airport that requires a tip when paying by credit card. This isn’t a sit down restaurant with table service. You pay at the counter, and I was buying a bottle of water.
The payment terminal at the concession requires you to select a tip amount prior to processing your card. $0.00 is not accepted.
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 »
