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Cool Test: Airline Picks Up Checked Bags From Your Home, Hands You Boarding Pass

plane with loading dock
Nov 03 2017

Federal rules notwithstanding the need to check in is a bit of an anachronism. Requiring it of every passenger does let an airline know a few minutes earlier how many people haven’t checked in, therefore losing their seats, and making seats available to accommodate other passengers. But is it really worth imposing the (small) cost on millions of people per day?

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Virgin America Flight History Won’t Count Towards Alaska Airlines Lifetime Elite Status

Nov 03 2017

A reader asked me how his Virgin America flight history would count towards Alaska Airlines lifetime elite status once the Virgin brand was completely folded in Alaska Airlines.

Alaska Airlines awards lifetime MVP Gold status after 1 million actual miles flown on Alaska (and not counting flights on partner airlines besides, for instance, Horizon).

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Man and Woman Meet for the First Time on Delta Flight, Have Sex, Face Charges

Stories of inflight sex are hardly newsworthy in and of themselves. They’ve been going on since November 1916, when a pilot took up a woman who wasn’t his wife in a Curtiss Flying Boat C‑2 over Long Island. They put the plane on auto-pilot — which existed back then! — but bumped and disengaged it, causing the plan to fall into the bay. They were rescued… naked. In modern times the idea usually goes like this: one person gets up to go to the lavatory. The other stays at their seat for a few more moments, and then gets up hoping nobody notices that they join in and that the other person hasn’t gone back to their seats. Joining the mile high club happens less frequently than you’d think because: There’s nothing sexy about an…

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