Category Archives for Airports.
A man running a gold smuggling ring out of Singapore has pled guilty to corruption after airline check-in counter staff flipped on the operation. Apparently he wasn’t just shipping his gold as checked luggage, he was too cheap to pay the excess baggage fees and bribed counter staff to understate the weight of the bags on Tigerair flights to Chennai.
If he had been willing to pay for his checked bags, he might not have been caught.
Dubai International Airport has launched a new “TaxiDXB” service making “hailing a taxi” possible inside the terminal. So far offered just in Concourse B, the airport plans to expand this “to other concourses in the coming months.”
Did you realize that all of your airport movements are being captured on video? At most airports all public spaces are being recorded. Those recordings aren’t just used for security either. Airlines have access to them. Whenever a story about bad passengers comes out, or airlines acting badly towards passengers, there’s video and airlines review it to see what really happened and potentially defend themselves.
The quality of video is surprisingly high in some airports around the world.
Monday night an Alaska Airlines employee “spotted two men who she thought looked suspicious” at Newark airport. She “approached them, the men started running and she screamed “evacuate.”
The Alaska employee “hit an alarm..and nearly 200 passengers evacuated the gate.” Passengers ran, hid under seats, and reportedly there was “glass..shattered from people jumping.”
A man who ate free for a year buying a refundable ticket, accessing the China Eastern lounge in Xi’an, China, and the refunding his ticket. Every. Day. There can be consequences to this scam: Lufthansa sued a passenger and won 200 euros after the man booked and cancelled 36 tickets in a year for the purpose of obtaining business class lounge access.
Another passenger was even arrested after living in 9 different Priority Pass lounges at the Singapore airport over the course of 3 weeks.
The federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that lawsuits are permitted for abusive searches under the Federal Tort Claims Act. An en banc panel of the court decided 9-4 that TSA security checkpoint employees are “officers or employees” of the federal government and that they “execute searches.” The TSA for its part claims not to search passengers, only to ‘screen’ them.
Even when the Department of Transportation backing up airline efforts to crack down on emotional support animals, the DOT ruled that miniature horses have to be allowed on board
Here comes a woman, just strolling through the airport with her horse.
It’s never a good idea to take a lot of cash with you through the airport. The government can take the cash by saying your bag smells like pot (or saying that a dog thinks it smells like pot). No charges need every be filed. This isn’t an isolated experience. Maybe your Uber driver’s trunk smelled like pot and your bag was closed up inside for half an hour. In fact flying Chicago – Los Angeles is enough of a reason for the government to suspect you of being a drug dealer and take whatever money you may be carrying. But what if the government doesn’t take your cash, and takes your jar of honey instead? A man recently spent 82 days in jail because he returned home to the U.S., bringing a jar of…
My hometown airport, Austin-Bergstrom, is offering subsidies to airlines willing to start non-stop service to Hawaii, Amsterdam, Beijing, Dublin, Paris, Seoul, Shanghai, and Tokyo.
Not all of these routes are likely (or even plausible) but most are — for the right amount of cash.
TSA has backed down in the face of employees’ union objections and the requirement will not go into effect.
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 »
