Category Archives for Airports.
A passenger traveling through Washington Dulles airport had her backpack stolen with her laptop inside. There’s almost no worse place to steal something than an airport, if you can get cooperation from officials. There are cameras everywhere. But she was on her own to investigate – after receiving nude photos of herself via online messaging.
According to social media account ‘Only in Dade’ a pipe burst at the Miami airport, in what appears to be the American Airlines D concourse, and that reports are that toilet system “black water” spilled out onto the concourse.
Supporters of Palestinians – and in some cases of Hamas – have been taking over roads leading to airports, blocking access at places including Chicago O’Hare, New York JFK, and Los Angeles and elsewhere.
This has been a huge inconvenience to travelers that are missing flights, and probably doesn’t gain any sympathy from them. Still, it’s probably better to protest at airports than the planned and since-cancelled protest at the Holocaust Museum. But what are they trying to accomplish exactly?
Here’s a scam that savvy travelers need to watch out for. The internet, and especially Facebook Marketplace, has exploded with deals offering to sell unclaimed luggage and all of its contents at a deep discount – think $10. Sometimes they say it’s for charity, other times the $10 even includes shipping, but it’s too good to be true and these offers are not real.
A share in my social feed reminded me of this incredible story that links Chicago O’Hare and Al Capone. It’s really two stories, but stay with me until the end.
Delta Air Lines has been lobbying to modify flight restrictions at Washington’s National Airport, specifically targeting the 1,250-mile perimeter rule that limits long-distance flights. Congress has been looking for a deal to give them something, not not all of what they want. United may have found a workaround so that no airline takes advantage of the new opportunities Congress provides.
TSA has often failed to catch over 90% of contraband going through checkpoints, there have been tens of thousands of misconduct complaints against the agency’s staff, and yet we haven’t seen repeats in the U.S. of 9/11 largely because there aren’t as many threats as we think, they’re harder to carry out than we imagine, and because we’ve reinforced cockpit doors and passengers would no longer sit docilely by as an attack was carried out.
It turns out that the union no longer has confidence in the integrity of the ballot. They’ve discovered vulnerabilities that would have allowed the vote to be manipulated, and errors that may have failed to tally some votes. And they’re going to hold the vote over.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is engaged in a “pre-Christmas crackdown” on passengers carrying cash out of the country with an apparent focus on Washington Dulles airport.
On Thursday they seized $68,000 from a family flying United Airlines 612 to Lagos, Nigeria after searching their bags. They were carrying $68,216, and authorities left them with $216 and allowed them to continue their travels.
American Airlines and United Airlines want Chicago O’Hare’s expansion that they signed off on in 2018 slowed down – or stopped – as the project runs $1.5 billion over budget. Somehow the carriers are surprised that a massive public infrastructure project, in Chicago no less, is spending far more than originally projected?
And in fact it’s only just the ‘next phase’ where a 24% projected cost overrun totals $1.5 billion more than expected. That’s before construction on the new terminal even starts! The project’s total cost has grown from $8.7 billion to a projected $12.1 billion. So the terminal’s overrun is only one piece of an overall $3.4 billion price increase.
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 »
