What Are the Least Racist Airports to Go Through US Immigration?

by Gary Leff

passport getting stamped
Jun 16 2018

There’s no question that immigration and customs develops a different culture and reputation at different airports in the U.S. While you’d hope they would apply standards and procedures from their handbook uniformly, there’s a difference between de facto practice and de jure rules.

People learn procedures by watching other people, and by discussing how to go about doing their jobs with colleagues. In other words, customs and immigration procedures are carried out by people.

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Report: Sick Passengers Refused Water, Threatened With Arrest During 4 Hour Delay on Singapore Flight

by Gary Leff

people fighting on plane
Jun 16 2018

On Friday’s Singapore Airlines flight SQ516 from Singapore to Kolkata, India was delayed four hours due to non-working air conditioning onboard. But apparently crew didn’t keep passengers informed about what was wrong or what it looked like to fix the aircraft.

There weren’t any refreshments served during the delay that stretched as long as the block time for this four-times weekly Airbus A330. Allegedly sick passengers were refused water.

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American Will Pay $45 Million to Settle Claim They Illegally Colluded With Other Airlines

by Gary Leff

american plane
Jun 15 2018

Three years ago the Department of Justice announced that they were investigating the US airlines for unlawful collusion to limit capacity and increase airfares.

DOJ walking away from its case didn’t end matters. There’s still a private lawsuit. It argues that the major US airlines colluded to restrict capacity through their public statements calling for capacity discipline.

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675 American Airlines Regional Flights Cancelled, Here’s What American is Telling Employees

by Gary Leff

american eagle plane
Jun 15 2018

This has gotten some coverage but since it’s an outage at regional carrier PSA — a wholly owned subsidiary that operates as American Eagle — rather than at mainline American it’s relatively undercovered considering the magnitude of travel disruption.

PSA operates over 100 Bombardier CRJ regional jets. Their largest operation centers around American’s Charlotte hub.

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Award Alert: 4 or More Business Class Award Seats to Asia From Several US Cities

by Gary Leff

flight chart
Jun 14 2018

I frequently highlight awards bookable with American AAdvantge miles in premium cabins because they tend to make fewer seats available than many other airlines on their own planes and because they have fewer partners through the oneworld alliance than United does through Star.

As a result it’s worth jumping when there are plenty of award seats available on long haul routes. That’s doubly true when you’re looking for more than two seats, because finding availability for four is exponentially harder much of the time and to many destinations.

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Etihad Lost $1.5 Billion Last Year — After a $2 Billion Loss the Year Before

by Gary Leff

airplane docked
Jun 14 2018

Etihad is in the midst of re-organizing its business. The airline that launched after Gulf Air eliminated its Abu Dhabi hub by hiring away Gulf Air’s CEO adopted a strategy of buying stakes in troubled airlines around the world and redirecting their connecting traffic through Abu Dhabi. But that didn’t work out very well — the available carriers were in some cases real basket cases and not candidates for turning around with new uniforms and group purchasing agreements.

When energy prices dropped the Al Nahyan family’s appetite for absorbing losses in exchange for growing an international hub airline ran out.

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