New and notes from around the interweb:
- A blogger details how she made $300 flying to China by renting out her checked baggage allowance to Airmule. A must-read for anyone that’s been curious about the process, though not one I’d undertake. Definitely read the whole thing.
There is an inherent risk to working as a courier where you don’t pack the bags yourself. Although I opened the suitcases and everything appeared to match up with the packing list, several items were in closed or sealed packages that I couldn’t access. If something illegal made it past the Airmule screening process, I’d never know and China is not the greatest place to push the boundaries.
- Delta’s Chief Marketing Officer says people are traveling more to get instagrammable photos. Presumably then an airline capturing this extra business implies having the more instagrammable cabin. Boeing’s Sky Interior alone doesn’t cut it, though seat back video screens always improve photos immensely. (HT: Jennifer Billock)
- Pilots union says Delta is shipping their job to Mexico and wants the Department of Transportation to stop it as a condition of renewing the carrier’s joint venture with Aeromexico.
Copyright: noratm / 123RF Stock Photo - 40% bonus transferring Diners Club to British Airways long gone are the annual summer 100% bonuses.
- John Travolta is donating a Boeing 707
- Update on bidding for Star Alliance member Asiana
- I know “Talk Like a Pirate Day” is a day each year, but who knew there’s a Customer Experience Day existed. Do any of the airlines celebrate?
I thought this was illegal and you had to pack your own bags.
Either way not something I’d risk.
I wrote about Airmule two years ago, and they’re still doing this irresponsible business. In my view, this company should go out of business before they get someone killed. https://www.seat31b.com/2017/08/99-beijing-flights-with-a-dangerous-catch/
The company has “mule” in its name. Truth in advertising!
An equally accurate name would be Airmoron.
Everything old is new again.
In the 70s and 80s a great deal of international shipping was done using “onboard couriers”, people who accompanied canvas bags full of overnight shipments. DHL operated this way, as did TNT Skypack. Sometimes the couriers were family members of employees (which I think was how DHL did most of their business) but in other cases you could just sign up and be on on-board courier.
I did several flights to Europe (including a return on the Concorde) as well as Asia with these services. Eventually the whole thing got commercialized (a company called Now Voyager inserted themselves between the couriers and the courier companies) and co-pays were introduced. Eventually it was no longer enough of a discount to make courier flight interesting.
There are some differences between the old model (where the courier company bought the same flight each day and made all the arrangements) and the new one (where you tell them when you’re flying and they’ll see if they have goods for transport). Although clearing customs with the goods (and a manifest) was always part of the deal, at some outstations the clearance agent was actually able to meet you at baggage claim (between immigration and customs) and do the clearance.
Interestingly, AirMule (and Grabr, also mentioned in the linked article) are far from the only services that show up if you google “onboard courier” or “hand carry service”.
I remember Now Voyager. I used to call up their hotline and listen to their recording but never took them up on it. Nowadays “Air Mule”….uh yeah, I think I’ll pass on that one.
Airmule seems more interested in paying bloggers to promote themselves than actually investing in the service. For non-bloggers, after your first trip, you will almost never be matched with a package and the experience is remarkably worse if you do. They seem to be following the Uber model of trying to get as many people as possible to use the service once.