Now Hilton is Being Sued Over Resort Fees, Too

by Gary Leff

hotel
Jul 24 2019

Washington DC is suing Marriott over deceptive resort fees.

In some sense it was strange to go after just Marriott whose practices are no worse than the rest of the industry. It turns out that while the attorneys generals of all 50 states and the District of Columbia were investigating resort fees, they had broken out the work and D.C. was directly involved with investigating Marriott. Now that D.C. broke away from the group and filed a case on its own, it’s not surprising to see additional defections.

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London Airport Workers Call Off This Weekend’s Strike

by Gary Leff

british airways plane
Jul 24 2019

Airlines were making contingency plans to keep their employees away from London airports Friday and Saturday, and some were letting customers change their travel plans without a fee. It’s Wednesday and folks didn’t know whether they’d be able to fly in two days because of a strike by airport workers.

Fortunately the strike for this Friday and Saturday has been called off. Workers will vote on a new contract.

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American Airlines Change May Let You Keep Your First Class Upgrade When Changing Flights

by Gary Leff

economy seats
Jul 23 2019

This change has been consistent in reports whether confirming a same day change to an itinerary, or swapping flights during irregular operations using the American Airlines app. Presumably because American sees you in R and is simply rebooking you into R, and R is now far more available since it’s been given a dual use as the second highest first class fare class.

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Delta Declares the Airport Experience the Next Battleground, But Can’t Actually Make It Better

by Gary Leff

airport bridge
Jul 22 2019

Delta thinks they have the flight experience part of travel down and won, and their CFO declares “the next area of competition in air travel is in the airport.” But they’ve turned over too much of the travel experience to government airports, government security, and government air traffic control to really make a difference.

Delta is likely to identify some some incremental improvements to reduce hassle and declare them revolutionary. And if it’s even a little better than the United and American airport experience they’ll be hailed for it.

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Is Airbus Doing Enough to Stop the Fumes that are Making People Sick?

by Gary Leff

Jul 22 2019

There are scores of Airbus narrowbody fume incidents across diverse carriers — including some fume occurrences leading to flight diversions and hospitalized passengers and crew — across JetBlue, Austrian, British Airways, American Airlines, Spirit, Lufthansa, easyJet, Aer Lingus, Jetstar, Germanwings, Turkish, Air France, Delta and others.

Airbus, airlines, the FAA and international regulators are familiar with and have paid attention to these events and yet they keep occurring. We don’t hear about them as a systematic issue, and I have to wonder if Airbus is doing enough, proactively enough, about it?

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