Texas Mom And Toddler Booted Off United Flight After Misgendering Flight Attendant

by Gary Leff

Jun 27 2024

A United Airlines passenger flying from San Francisco to Austin with her young child was kicked off her flight on Wednesday after misgendering a flight attendant. It’s disputed whether the misgendering incident is the only reason for her removal.

Jenna Longoria was traveling with her 16-month-old son and her mother. She says that the misgendering was an accident. The airline, though, says that “a party of three traveling out of San Francisco today was not allowed to board following a discussion about having too many carry-on items.” It seems likely that’s when the pronoun discussion occurred.

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JetBlue Will Disable Doors On Some Business Class Seats To Save Money

by Gary Leff

Jun 26 2024

The FAA has decided that the workload in ensuring business class suite doors are in their correct position is significant. These doors generally have to be open during taxi, take-off, and landing. And that extra work means that airlines have to staff cabin crew beyond otherwise-required minimums (of 1 flight attendant per 50 seats) for planes with doors.

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DOT Makes Egregious Error Laying Out Which Airlines Are Eligible For New Flights At Washington National Airport

by Gary Leff

Jun 26 2024

Frontier AIrlines flies to National airport 3 times daily, but under the law for purposes of new flights they are not currently an incumbent carrier. Spirit Airlines doesn’t fly there, but they are considered to. And DOT says that Alaska is a “limited incumbent” but failed to consider their codesharing with American Airlines – while listing Air Canada as eligible to operate routes to U.S. domestic destinations. Oops!

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Ugh: Southwest Airlines Revenue Projections Plummet, Problems Worse Than We Thought

by Gary Leff

Jun 26 2024

We’re mere days away from the end of the second quarter, and Southwest Airlines has filed an SEC 8-K updating its projections of how the quarter will go. Things are bloody. Their previous ‘worst case scenario’ was projecting a 3.5% year-over-year drop in revenue per available seat mile. That’s bad, and a big part of why Southwest is scrambling to change its business model, for instance considering seat assignments and premium seating. But things are worse than they’d previously suggested – a range of down 1.5% – 3.5%. They now say it’ll be down 4% – 4.5%. That’s on increased capacity, where their guidance hasn’t changed. I suppose they can only be thankful for Boeing delivery delays – without which there’d be more capacity and even lower revenue per available seat mile. While they aren’t…

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