Another Southwest Flight Attendant Cares for Baby Inflight, this Great Service is Getting Ridiculous

by Gary Leff

man and baby
Jun 02 2019

The Dowell family found three seats together in the last row of their Boeing 737-800, and were struggling to juggle their bags and accoutrements for their baby. That’s when Wesley, one of the flight attendants on board, offered to hold 9-month old Alayna while they got themselves situated.

She was “screaming her head off for quite a while” while inflight so Wesley came back and offered to take her — walking her up and down the aisle, shushing her, and calming her. He did this for 15 minutes, “rubbing her back, walking up and down the aisle like it was just a day in the park” before returning her to her parents where she fell asleep.

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Is Detroit Challenging Atlanta as the Most Corrupt Airport in the Country?

by Gary Leff

planes docked
Jun 02 2019

The airport’s former manager is in the midst of a federal criminal trial. James Warner is accused of “fabricating invoices, overcharging the airport for work performed by contractors and receiving more than $5 million worth of kickbacks during a four-year period” — which is even more than Detroit’s former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick took in payoffs.

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United’s Air Canada Award Availability Problem Fixed

by Gary Leff

lounge desk
Jun 02 2019

Last month I received several questions from readers about why United wasn’t showing award space on Air Canada that appeared to be available to every other Star Alliance partner?

If you called United and spoke to an agent they’d generally be able to ‘see’ the inventory (in other words, X and I buckets for economy and business appeared to have space) but they couldn’t book it. What’s more that’s at a time when Air Canada availability looked excellent when searching on other partner websites, like Singapore Airlines Krisflyer, even for tough-to-get flights like Vancouver – Sydney.

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THAI Smile Joining Star Alliance as a Connecting Partner

by Gary Leff

plane with smile on it
Jun 01 2019

THAThai Airways has transferred a lot of its domestic and regional flying to THAI Smile, its lower cost subsidiary which operates 20 Airbus A320 aircraft. That makes award travel to many Thai cities problematic, because THAI Smile isn’t a Star Alliance member so miles from United, Aeroplan, LifeMiles and other Star programs don’t allow redemption on THAI Smile flights.

Thai Airways itself no longer operates any narrowbody aircraft.

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Delta Trapped Flight Attendants on a Plane to Avoid Cancelling a Flight

by Gary Leff

delta plane
Jun 01 2019

Delta is known for their operational reliability. But the very true saying goes ‘you get what you measure’. Since Delta doesn’t want to cancel flights they will do take extreme steps to fudge the numbers. Sometimes instead of ‘cancelling’ a flight they’ll just ‘delay’ it a day.

On May 12, it seems, an employee in operations took the edict not to cancel flights too far. The Toronto flight faced a maintenance delay, and crew at the end of their duty delay. Flight attendants were reaching the point where they would have to volunteer to keep working or the flight wouldn’t leave.

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Televangelist Finds Passengers Getting Dragged Down the Aisle Too Distracting, Has to Fly Private

by Gary Leff

airline cabin
Jun 01 2019

Kenneth Copeland’s ministry once disclosed that it owns at least 5 planes, including a Gulfstream V which was purchased from Tyler Perry. Copeland says the Lord speaks to him, and performs maintenance on his aircraft.

The minister has described flying commercial as getting in a long tube with a bunch of demons. Lisa Guerrero ambushed Copeland with a surprise interview for Inside Edition and asked him about that.

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