Category Archives for Passengers.
Travel is frustrating. We’ve all been there. Long lines to get through security, not enough staff at airport concessions. You can’t even get into the club because too many other customers have access. You’re delayed, the crew time out, and you finally learn you aren’t getting where you’re going. It’s enough to make you…
Oh, wait. No, it doesn’t cause you to do anything like this.
Los Angeles-based documentary film producer and cinematographer Erroll Webber had film equipment go missing from his luggage in Anchorage. Before checking bags on his United flight he stuck an Apple AirTags on one of the equipment bags.
Webber’s bag made it, he says, without the film equipment. But he was able to track it to the perpetrator’s house.
A flight attendant for American Airlines wholly-owned regional carrier PSA detained a passenger and confiscated his phone when the plane had arrived at its destination. The passenger explained that they were already on the jet bridge headed into the terminal, but the crewmember wanted to review the phone’s photos to see whether they appeared in any of the shots.
A woman went into labor today on American Airlines flight 87 from London Heathrow to Chicago O’Hare. The plane diverted to Reykjavik for the mother and child to receive medical attention. After just under two hours on the ground in Iceland, the Boeing 787-9 aircraft took off from the Keflavik airport bound for Chicago.
Ex-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is returning to London from holiday in Punta Cana, just as shocked apparently as the rest of the world by the rapid meltdown of Liz Truss’s tenure at 10 Downing Street. He wasn’t even on the Continent.
Travel is expensive, and flights are full. So it shouldn’t be surprising that he isn’t flying business.
In 26 years of business travel I’ve seen and experienced a lot, from bird strikes to passengers self-upgrading and even one who brought their own alcohol on board and refused to stop drinking it even though they were in first class and the flight attendant was happy to bring them another. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this: a passenger with a water bottle in their seat back pocket that was bubbling and had a tube sticking out of it.
On closer inspection, though, it wasn’t just water inside the bottle. There were fish.
The illegally-parked Porsche – intruding on a handicap space – left the woman ‘alone in the dark’ and unable to get into her vehicle to leave. Parking staff told the woman to call the police. Police told her to deal with parking staff. This went on for hours.
A woman flying six weeks before the due date of her pregnancy gave birth on an American Airlines flight to the Dominican Republic. American Airlines allows travel up until the fourth week prior to a due date without a doctor’s letter.
The woman’s water broke inflight and then mere minutes later her baby was born. She named her son “Skylen” because he was born in the sky. His birth certificate will reflect his actual place of birth, too.
On September 29, a woman flying Star Alliance airline Aegean from Athens to Amsterdam decided to let it all hang out. Her hair, that is. Sitting behind her was a food blogger with a big internet presence. So I’m not really sure she minded, for her it was content gold even if the behavior was reprehensible.
Oddly the blogger comments on the woman’s beautiful and freshly-washed hair. But it did drape down far enough that it almost grazed the coffee cup on the tray behind her.
Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon writer Chase Mitchell took to social media to share his bizarre experience flying American Airlines from Los Angeles to Philadelphia on Friday. Conspiracy-minded people need to drink less on airplanes.
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 »
