Securing a confirmed suite here is tough because they have only a few on property, so I decided to book my 2022 stay a year in advance as soon as I’d returned home from my last visit.
Two weeks prior to arrival I received a voicemail and email from the hotel’s Front Office Manager asking me to call him. That couldn’t be good.
Standbys are being cleared earlier automatically and upgrades are now being cleared earlier by the ‘Agent Assist’ program which was developed to make work at the boarding gate easier, support single agent boarding, and still allow a flight to go off on time.
But with standbys and upgrades happening earlier, more customers are showing up at the gate asking to get on board after most seats have already been given away.
Last summer a customer on Twitter revealed that airport concessions operator OTG charging $28 plus tax and tip for beer at Newark airport. This clearly violated their lease to abide by ‘street pricing’ rules.
OTG, famous for making you order everything via an iPad, quickly claimed the pricing was a mistake, corrected it, but still argued that it really wasn’t such a bad deal after all because it was a big pour ($28 beer was better value than they’re being given credit for). Several members of Congress sprung into action.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was photographed flying first class on American Airlines Friday enroute to a Pittsburgh event where he campaigned for State Rep. Summer Lee who is running for Congress in Pennsylvania. Sanders was wearing a mask.
There’s an argument for slowing down spread when you’re on the cusp on prophylactics and treatments, or when hospital capacity is overwhelmed. Neither is the case today, so while a test prior to travel reduces the likelihood a given individual is infectious at time of flight it doesn’t have a material affect on the broader public health situation. And we don’t require testing prior to domestic travel, or for large gatherings.
Luggage shipping services haven’t ever really seemed quite ready to go mainstream even though they’ve been around for many years. However a Shark Tank contestant company pitches that you save both time and money shipping with them. Here’s the math, how it works, and the risks involved.
The only positive part of the American Airlines project to cram more seats into its domestic aircraft is that they’ve also added bigger overhead bins – big enough that each passenger should be able to bring one regulation-sized carry on bag onto the plane and stow it in the overhead.
Yet American Airlines still tells agents to make customers gate check bags on planes with these bigger bins.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
We’re in a strange place in the pandemic where increasingly people think it is ok to travel while infectious with Covid-19. It is not ok to travel when you are sick and that was true before the pandemic, even though CDC advice used to say that it generally is ok for many people.
“[O]ne in four people who follow a cautious doctor who writes frequently about Covid..think that a known symptomatic Covid case should still go to a terminal and get on a flight.”
Processing standbys earlier does make it possible for customers to get a main cabin seat and then be eligible for an upgrade 40 minutes out. However processing standbys earlier makes it tougher for a customer to run up to the gate, trying to make an earlier flight, and still get on. Non-revenue customers may be cleared onto a flight ahead of paid customers trying to fly earlier.
I’m happy with the tradeoff because when the algorithm decides who gets the seats I shouldn’t need to worry about rogue agents.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
