Category Archives for Airports.
It’s not easy to catch a rideshare in many parts of flyover country. One man in the part of Southern Illinois that’s known as “Little Egypt” found himself without a ride to the airport so he stole a backhoe for the 10 mile drive to the airport.
On May 19, a United Airlines flight was forced to abort landing in order to avoid a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 on the runway. Then an Alaska Airlines jet aborted its landing, too.
Air traffic control called out the Southwest pilot – “you shouldn’t be on the runway.”
No matter how young, children still need their own approved Global Entry application in order to use Global Entry machines and lanes when going through U.S. immigration. But they don’t need it for airport security. And the TSA has increased the age from 13 to 18 for when that changes.
United Airlines is the major tenant, operating out of temporary facilities that were build in… 1983. The idea was that new, permanent facilities would replace the C and D concourses, but never did.
Four years ago American Airlines and Dallas – Fort Worth airport came to agreement on terminal improvements that included piecemealing a new terminal F and refreshing terminal C. At the time this was estimated to cost $3 to $3.5 billion.
Capital construction was part of master lease negotiations. The old lease expired in 2020, but was extended due to the pandemic. With American representing over 85% of passenger traffic, they have the lion’s share of say. And together with their joint venture partners they’re able to exercise de facto control. So it was American on hand with the CEO of the airport when they announced a new master lease today, that finally included plans for the new terminal and existing terminal refresh.
The issue here is what is best for passengers, not United’s shareholders which received nearly $10 billion in taxpayer cash already during the pandemic. United’s efforts at Washington Dulles have been subsidized for nearly 40 years. That’s too long rather than a justification for more subsidies at the expense of passenger choices and competition.
The airport is spending $1.4 billion to reduce the number of gates at the airport.
A new lobbying effort has spun up to relax the perimeter rule at Washington National airport. Limits are placed on the distance flights can operate from the airport in order to limit congestion and noise and to protect Dulles airport for longer haul traffic.
Whether or not ‘Newark airport’ is really New York has been a top of some controversy since 1934, when New York City’s mayor Fiorello La Guardia pulled a stunt refusing to get off of a TWA flight from Chicago at Newark airport because his ticket said his destination was New York. He demanded to be flown to New York. The end result was LaGuardia airport.
If you wanted to open a business like a restaurant in the Atlanta airport you needed to pay the ex-Mayor’s daughter first. The airport’s former manager was fired for being insufficiently corrupt, and then the city council buried the payments that bought his silence.
Getting kickbacks from vendors avoids problems with violating FAA rules on use of funds, but does sometimes attract attention of the FBI. Some employees just commit expense fraud.
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 »
