Category Archives for Passengers.
Monday night’s Spirit Airlines flight 3902 from Atlanta to Detroit was delayed five hours. After a significant mechanical delay, passengers “were eventually told they could board around 10:15 p.m.” and around 15 did indeed board.
However “rowdy travelers caused another delay” and Spirit gate agents shut the boarding doors so that “nobody else could board.”
On Sunday night flying in the Northeast was a mess. Flights out of the three DC-area airports were paused while the FAA’s air traffic control organization suffered an equipment failure at Potomac TRACON. Flights resumed shortly after 7 p.m. Eastern time, but there was a backlog to clear. Some flights cancelled, for instance as crew exceeded their maximum duty hours.
Royal Air Maroc flies Washington Dulles to Casablanca five days a week using a Boeing 787-8. After several hours staff hadn’t communicated at all with passengers. Then they finally cancelled the flight. And the passengers went into revolt. Staff fled for their safety.
A United Airlines passenger is shown in a video surreptitiously vaping during a flight, and then exhaling water vapor. Another passenger on board who videotaped the incident shared that it was brought to the flight attendants, who “completely dismissed it.”
The 27-year-old woman “undressed completely” prior to pushback on Friday and “screamed loudly.” The incident was enough to trigger both federal and state police, who tried to put a blanket over her. It was her nakedness, rather than unruliness, that appeared to be their response priority.
Travel the past couple of days has been brutal, with storms and an FAA outage snarling flights. One passenger was forced to endure an 18 hour delay – and was rewarded by an American Airlines flight, operated just for him.
Rampers showed up to load bags – just for him. He was called to board his flight – by name. And the crew did their safety demonstration – just for him.
Children are allowed in business and first class because airlines want to sell tickets. Families buy more than one ticket at a time! While airlines promote buying up to a premium cabin for rest, they don’t promote the product you’re buying as child-free. And as a business or first class passenger you don’t have a moral claim to inflict the screaming on other passengers in the larger economy cabin.
Christie famously fell asleep at a Bruce Springsteen concert (though he claimed he only put his head back and closed his eyes).
Here he’s flying commercial. And he’s crashed out.
When Juanie boarded her Delta Air Lines flight, she found that she was seated next to a woman who had a pitbull sitting in her seat. The woman asked Juanie to give up the seat for her pitbull – and, Juanie says, the dog owner became aggressive when she declined.
A Frontier Airlines mechanic was working to replace a lavatory mirror on a ten year old Airbus A320 (registration N228FR) acquired in 2015 from now-defunct Monarch Airlines in Tampa back on February 20th. He saw something behind the mirror that looked like a postcard. He read it, and – he says – he was “blown away.”
He had found a photo of a 4 year old girl named Grace Kelly riding an airplane, and on it was a note from her grandparents.
An Air Canada unaccompanied minor reports that they were pushed and cussed at by another passenger, who demanded their upgraded seat.
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 »
