Category Archives for Airports.
A man walked airside through an exit at Dallas Love Field causing the airport to go under lockdown on Sunday night. Eventually he was found… in the food court.
This is an incredibly heartwarming story. Prieska Outland came upon a woman cleaning one of the bathrooms at the Charlotte airport. The woman was distraught. They to talking and beneath her mask were four missing teeth, and she was saving up to have them replaced. She had just 4% of the money she needed. And Ms. Outland verified the story, and paid the rest to the dentist to have it done.
Global Entry lets you skip immigration and customs queues when you return to the U.S. It also gets you TSA PreCheck. It costs $100 and lasts five years. When you renew you may be asked to show up in person. Getting an in-person interview has been nearly impossible.
The government has rolled out Zoom interviews for renewals. Here’s what that’s like – and the one mistake people are making.
Southwest Airlines operates 89% of flights and 92% of seats out of Houston Hobby airport this month, according to schedule data from Cirium. They have suspended inflight alcohol service indefinitely. So everyone is pre-gaming according to state alcohol sales data.
With the return to travel, and passenger growth at the airport, the South Terminal is seeing more passengers than ever before and it cannot fit them all. So passengers are being kept outside the terminal in tents. In the Central Texas summer.
In Denver TSA screeners worked together to find attractive passengers for coworkers interested in those of the same sex to give enhanced pat downs to. At LAX one screener insisted their job included seeing a woman’s breast and inspecting down her pants.
Now a TSA supervisor at Minneapolis – St. Paul was found to have taken photos of 42 young women being screened. However he’s only been charged with leaking surveillance video of a 9 year old boy riding the airport’s baggage carousel to the media.
Austin plans to eliminate its nearly new second terminal to make way for growth of the 1999-era main terminal. One of the fastest growing airports in the country for several years running, they’re figuring out how to accommodate the flights passengers want and airlines want to offer. But in the process they risk what makes the airport so attractive to fly out of in the first place.
CLEAR is expedited airport security. You use biometrics instead of a drivers license to identify yourself, and you skip to the front of the security line. If you’re eligible for PreCheck, you skip to the front of the PreCheck line. And you can leave your ID in your pocket or carry on. They’re also used at some entertainment venues.
When their home was raided they were held at gunpoint, handcuffed, and not allowed to use the bathroom for hours. You might say ‘but they were at the Capitol on January 6th’ and if they were convicted of activities related to the riots that day I might not be sympathetic. But they haven’t been charged. Many people there were innocent of wrongdoing. And there doesn’t appear to be any reason to suspect they’re a threat to aviation. Indeed, they’ve flown successfully and their behavior on those flights proves it.
You can skip showing an ID altogether if you have CLEAR and are flying from a terminal where that service is offered. Your eyes or fingerprints are your ID instead.
But if you don’t have ID, perhaps you’ve lost it or forgotten it, you can still fly. TSA has procedures for that. A viral video tells you how.
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 »
