Category Archives for Passengers.
After your flight lands you’re supposed to keep your seat belt buckled until the pilot parks at the gate and turns off the seat belt sign. Although if you’ve been on any commercial flight in the past decade you know that’s not what happens.
At the very latest once the plane stops (you might still not be at the gate, and will move again) passengers start to take off their seat belts, gather their belongings and sometimes even make their way into the aisle.
Footage from Chinese social media shows an airline passenger melting down earlier this year. He said he was caught in a “time loop” – this was his sixth cycle through. The flight already crashed, everyone died, but he’s returned to this point and was warning everyone. He said they were destined for the same fate as Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Three million people have viewed a video of a woman who refused to give up her window seat for a mother traveling with her two kids. The mother offered the passenger a middle seat in exchange for her window. Not happening! And the kids looked 11 and 15 – not four and six.
Airports and planes seem to bring out the worst in people. A small percentage of passengers lose their cool. Police wind up getting involved.
It’s rare to see police being called on an airline’s gate agents, but that’s just what happened over the weekend in Baltimore when journalist Seth Kaplan and his family were set to fly Air Canada to Toronto.
Here the passenger is shown confronting a crewmember, saying he’s a frequent traveler on United and that he’s standing up for his rights – while the flight attendant “is a douche.”
A woman is being roasted online after sharing that she was forced to gate check her carry on bag on an Aeromexico flight from Mexico to California – so she made her boyfriend “give up his shirt” so she could use it as a wrapping for the bag.
To her, the $200 Shay Michell’s BEIS carry on was worth preserving at the expense of his wardrobe.
United Airlines flight 20 from Houston to Amsterdam dumped fuel, and then diverted to Chicago, after the business class passenger in seat 11G melted down over not having his first choice of meal available. After removing the passenger and refueling at O’Hare, the flight just landed, about three and a half hours late.
I’m a strong proponent of passengers being able to take photographs in public, and that includes in publicly-owned airports. While I’m sympathetic to airlines that may want to limit the practice on their private property, I think it’s bad policy. That freedom should have limits.
A college student living in Los Angeles used miles to commute to school at U.C. Berkeley to save on rent. He was in a one-year program for a Master of Engineering in Transportation, was living rent-free, and planned to return to L.A. Why pay rent in the Bay Area when you can just fly up there three times a week (although he did have to commute daily for a few weeks)?
A Southwest Airlines flight from Las Vegas to Maui diverted to Oakland on Monday when a passenger Airdropped a bomb threat. The plane was evacuated, passengers and luggage were searched, and no explosives were found. After five hours and forty minutes on the ground the flight was permitted to continue to Hawaii, where it arrived about eight hours late.
The pilot lied to passengers during this diversion, reporting a mechanical issue – presumably so as not to tip off an actual terrorist. However, crew knew and a passenger reports hearing a flight attendant break down, “Get me the f— off this plane.”
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 »
