Category Archives for Passengers.
Reclining is allowed. Repeatedly body-slamming your seatback for two hours because the guy behind you is tall is not. That is what passengers say happened on a United flight from Denver to Chicago, while the 6’7″ man behind him somehow stayed completely unbothered while a flight attendant allowed it to continue.
Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey apparently went 20 years without seeing each other after their divorce. They both were in the same cabin of a flight to Hawaii, while Simpson’s second ex sat in back with their three kids.
Humanoid robots are now getting their own airline seats, and the rules are not ready. Southwest crews delayed one flight over a passenger’s 75-pound robot. On another crew had to figure out whether it was a passenger, baggage, or a lithium-battery problem. Robots are starting to enter ordinary travel faster than airline rules can keep up.
An American Airlines passenger tied a sweatshirt to the seatback and turned it into a no-cost privacy hood, sleep mask, and head stabilizer. It is clever enough that travelers are rethinking their long-flight setup — and weird enough to raise the obvious question of whether your comfort hack should be hanging off someone else’s seat.
JetBlue flight 882 from St. Lucia to New York JFK couldn’t operate on Friday due to a birdstrike. The airlnie delayed the flight until 11 a.m. on Saturday, but it telling passengers stuck overnight in the Caribbean that the airline will not provide hotel rooms.
A boss turned an Aer Lingus business class flight into the ultimate workplace fantasy: a promotion, a $1 million check, and a cabin full of passengers realizing they may work for the wrong company.
A 48-year-old passenger is accused of groping a sleeping woman on a Miami-bound flight from Zurich — and then, after crew separated him from her, allegedly trying to pass her a note saying she looked beautiful while sleeping. The first class detail makes the case even stranger, because SWISS’s long-haul seats are not exactly built for subtle contact across the armrest.
Everyone says phone calls on planes would be unbearable. But passengers already talk to each other out loud, sometimes for entire flights, and one American Airlines passenger managed to dictate voice memos from New York to Miami. Either way the issue is volume and courtesy, not what technology is used while emitting sound.
Delta passengers were stuck at the gate with no obvious help during the airline’s meltdown, so one of them grabbed the PA handset and started making announcements himself: “Delta, is anybody working?” It was a dumb move, but passengers do desperate things when an airline disappears on them.
A passenger on United Airlines flight 1837 from Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic to Newark “attacked a flight attendant” on Saturday, according to the captain, and “tried to open the forward main cabin door, trying to gain access to the flight deck.”
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 »
