Category Archives for Airports.
One week ago the British government announced sanctions against three Russian airlines: Aeroflot, Ural Airlines and Rossiya Airlines. This kept them from selling or leasing takeoff and landing slots at U.K. airports. Russian airlines already couldn’t enter U.K. airspace.
We now know what this means in practice for their London Heathrow slots: Russian airlines don’t just lose the ability to profit from their slots, they actually lose the slots.
The most expensive airfares in the country are at Washington Dulles airport, followed by San Francisco, Detroit, Portland and New York JFK. That’s according to Department of Transportation data for 2021. They tend to be either expensive airports with limited competition (New York JFK is slot-controlled) or dominated by a single airline without as much ultra low cost competition as those on the other end of the list.
This is a little bit insane. In 2015 Austin entered into a 30 year lease so that a private company could build a second airport terminal. The ‘South Terminal’ also has two 5 year extension options built into the lease. But the city wants to use eminent domain to terminate the lease, because it now prefers to expand the main terminal.
They’ve offered to compensate the builders less than $2 million for a project that cost as much as $20 million, while the city teaches every business it would be dumb to enter into a lease on city property because no deal with Austin is guaranteed.
Last summer a customer on Twitter revealed that airport concessions operator OTG charging $28 plus tax and tip for beer at Newark airport. This clearly violated their lease to abide by ‘street pricing’ rules.
OTG, famous for making you order everything via an iPad, quickly claimed the pricing was a mistake, corrected it, but still argued that it really wasn’t such a bad deal after all because it was a big pour ($28 beer was better value than they’re being given credit for). Several members of Congress sprung into action.
There are certain sounds, sights, and flavors that evoke travel. It wasn’t originally intended this way, but George Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue means United Airlines. For years Portico’s ‘white ginger’ smell meant Hyatt Regency, though I suppose Westin’s ‘white tea’ smell is more well-known. The flavor of Tortas Frontera sandwiches is the sine qua non of Chicago O’Hare airport for me.
But maybe there’s a new competitor, because there’s a sound which bellows down the hallways at terminals in Los Angeles, Chicago O’Hare, Las Vegas and Austin that I just cannot get out of my head.
Bobby Van’s is one of the better airport restaurants in the Priority Pass program. While you’re supposed to have a same day boarding pass to enter, that still lets you eat there both on arrival in New York and on departure as well.
In my experience they don’t actually check boarding passes, just swipe your card. If I were an American Airlines crewmember based in New York I’d definitely get a credit card that offers unlimited Priority Pass visits (not from American Express, which doesn’t cover restaurant visits).
Now that U.S. mask requirements on planes have generally been lifted, some people are starting to realize that not all restrictions are permanent and that at a minimum we should be doing cost-benefit analysis … and that much of the security theater we engage in wouldn’t pass critical scrutiny.
My dog ate my homework, I have a secret identity and had to fight crime, I was surfing the crimson wave.
Those classic excuses weren’t nearly creative enough for a Tampa airport TSA employee running late for work.
Philadelphia recently re-imposed an indoor mask mandate, and as a result the Philadelphia airport announced that it still requires masks in order to comply.
Except not all of the Philadelphia airport is under the jurisdiction of Philadelphia. Terminals A East and A West (along with two runways, and gates end the end of the B Concourse) are actually in Delaware County,
The world’s busiest airports have changed a lot due to changing travel patterns and the restrictions of the pandemic. Eight of the 10 busiest airports in the world in 2021 were in the United States. The seven busiest were all in the U.S. And not a single one was in Europe or the Mideast.
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 »
