News and notes from around the interweb:
- Hotel comes through with real customer service and Jeff Goldblum photos. (HT: Alan H.)
- Thailand looking to impose new bureaucratic hurdles on startup airlines in bid to limit domestic competition. Some will claim the rules are related to safety but remember it’s Thailand’s safety regulator that’s been called into question, not its airlines.
- 5 ways to land a free flight upgrade from Consumer Reports, I don’t endorse all of it but I do emphasize avoiding too many elites — stay away from those first thing Monday morning and Thursday and Friday evening flights.
Business travelers who fly often may have an elite status, so they are more likely to get a free flight upgrade than others, Leff says. To improve your chances of getting the upgrade, fly when business travelers are less likely to be in the sky. For example, avoid early Monday morning flights, when most business travelers leave on trips, as well as Thursday and Friday evening flights, when they tend to be returning home. Your chances of getting an upgrade are best on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, when planes are emptier.
- Greece is moving forward with allowing foreign corporations to redevelop its old unused Athens airport into “hotels, shops, a 494-acre park and 8,000 homes.”
- American plans to move its AA.com website and some other services to the cloud and is deciding between Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft for hosting.
- British carrier Jet2 has had a number of drunken passenger incidents and decided to ban alcohol before 8am in response. Jet2 passengers seem to side with the drunks over the crew. The morning ban doesn’t solve the problem it seems maybe they should consider a total ban?
Jet2 Boeing 737 - Miss your flight? Don’t run out onto the tarmac, underneath the aircraft, to stop the plane. (HT: Loyalty Lobby)
The wife stood in front of the tow truck of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner with her luggage when the aircraft has left the boarding bridge to taxi to the runway, according to the airport police.
She ignored the warnings of security guards and threatened the crew members on the aircraft to let her and her husband get onto the plane, the airport authority said.
“Your chances of getting an upgrade are best on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, when planes are emptier.”
Really … Free upgrade for non-Elte status members when plane is empty? What’s the logic here?
@eh *I’M* not talking about ‘no status’ here
LOL. #1 on the list of ways to get a “free” upgrade is to pay for it.
Not true. We have hundreds of thousands of miles and take long trips to Europe once a year. In the past, we were upgraded but not any more because, apparently, we don’t spend enough on United. I guess United is the airline of the 1 percent.
Funny how in a communist dictatorship people are willing to fight with the airlines (right or wrong) but here in USA we would piss our pants if the TSA looked crossly at us. Bush’s Freedom act has truly achieved its purpose in turning us all into well behaved sheep. Stalin would be proud of todays USA
P.S. Before the Freedom Act I would probably have posted this under my own name
and after the Freedom Act (and not necessarily in line with it), your name is not protected by your silly attempt at anonymity.