News and notes from around the interweb:
- Family flew to the wrong Portland (Maine) and a TSA screener spent his own money to help them get to Oregon.
- Atlanta airport will hire a firm to ‘secret shop’ airport retailers and monitor their compliance with ‘street pricing’ rules (that prices can be no more than 10% higher than off-airport) at a cost of $875,000 over 3 years.
- Air Canada favors mandatory Covid testing and thinks that’ll help it get government subsidies – they want in on some of that sweet sweet taxpayer cash their U.S. competitors and partners have been been getting drunk on.
“We compete with the U.S. airlines, so we think that a similar program [to the CARES Act], maybe with some Canadian modifications, would best suit the airline industry up here in Canada,” Rovinescu said when asked what kind of Covid aid the airline would like from the government.
U.S. carriers received more than $65 billion in Covid-related relief.
- Mayor kicks contractor Eulen America out of Miami airport (HT: Michael P)
The company provides ramp, cargo, cleaning and baggage-handling services to American, MIA’s largest carrier, and to Delta.
Miami Herald news partner CBS4 first reported the unsafe working conditions for Eulen workers in April 2019, including broken equipment and entire shifts outdoors without water breaks.
After the CBS4 story, workers said Eulen cleaned out the cockroach-infested supply trucks and added a truck with Gatorade to the tarmac.
- Hotels pivoting to become adult entertainment video studios during the pandemic
- Cayman Airways refers to the Boeing 737 MAX as the 737-8. In a recent announcement on fleet restructuring, Singapore Airlines did as well. Boeing tried this trick in August.
@ Gary — Air Canada competes with US airlines. Maybe they should try giving refunds to the Americans they have stolen from.
” ‘street pricing’ rules (that prices can be no more than 10% higher than off-airport) at a cost of $875,000 over 3 years.”
News Flash: prices are waaaaay higher than 10% above off-airport prices.
You’re welcome. Now, where can I collect my $875k ?
Great story on the Portlands. I wonder how many folks have over the years booked tickets to SJO Costa Rica when they wanted SJC California?! Nobody who reads these blogs I am sure. 😉
That said, you say they ended up in PDX, but you have the story reversed. They landed at Portland PDX in Oregon the article says, and then were finally saved and routed to Portland, Maine. I live in nearby Vancouver, WA, just across the river and moments away. I have seen a t-shirt that says something like “Vancouver, not Canada. Washington, not DC. Near Portland, not Maine.”
On PDX vs. PWM, great TSO, also interesting the carrier? did not re-open the e-ticket coupons and re-accommodate the pax?
Also I’m glad the mayor of MIA has some guts! If congress and the executive branch had some guts and weren’t bought off by the airlines, it would be interesting if they required airlines to dump all these shadowy contractor companies and in-source all the work themselves! So all the behind the scenes work would be required to be completed by employees on the airlines payroll with full airline benefits instead of the payroll of these shadowy slave labor contractors.
They booked tickets to Portland through a travel agent. Shouldn’t the agent have asked in which state if they hadn’t volunteered that information? I’m glad the TSA agent is doing so well he could afford to chip in, but shouldn’t the travel agent be on the hook for the tickets from Oregon to Maine?