American Airlines flight 697 from Kauai to Phoenix faced significant delays due to overbooking and operational challenges, leading to a chaotic situation where passengers were involuntarily denied boarding, and the flight risked cancellation due to crew duty hour limitations. The incident, reminiscent of past airline controversies, highlights ongoing issues with handling overbooked flights and passenger management.
The Global Loyalty Organization hosted loyalty leader predictions for 2024. A lot of it was milquetoast, and not really actionable, as so much corporate speak is wont to be. But there were a few real insights here. Four things especially stood out.
A kid had their shirt pulled out the missing piece of fuselage, while his mother held onto him. There were lap infants on the plane being held by their parents, while flight attendants assisted with oxygen masks. Luckily there wasn’t anyone seated in the seat beside the inactivated exit door the came off of the plane.
There were two cell phones that flew out of the plane. Here’s one, an iPhone that dropped from more than 16,000 feet and was found on the side of a road. It was in airplane mode and had details of the owner’s checked baggage up on the screen. It had apparently been plugged in to charge, and was yanked off of the charger and out the side of the aircraft.
Following the recent Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 incident, the NTSB determined that the cockpit voice recorder, in place to help review aviation incidents and make flying safer, had already been recorded over. Two hours of recording time isn’t enough when it takes awhile to recover a ‘black box’. But pilot unions say their members’ privacy trumps safety.
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.
Over the summer a woman noticed the guy seated in front of her and ‘took her shot’ writing her number on a Southwest Airlines napkin and passing it to him, suggesting he text her if he is single and interested.
She followed up on social media to let everyone know how it worked out.
Air France does a nice job generally selecting its business class wines. Their customers expect it. But budgets are still constrained in business class, both in the air and on the ground.
So I was shocked when a reader spotted a single bottle of 2011 Chateau Branaire Ducru St. Julien in their Paris Charles de Gaulle Terminal 2E Hall M business lounge. Wow. It turned out to be the last or only bottle they had, and he finished it off for them.
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.
A passenger boarded a redeye flight, and spent 6 hours with their flashing rainbow charging cable plugged into their coach seat while passengers around them filmed because it was too bright for them to sleep.
Seth Dillon, CEO at news satire website Babylon Bee, was flying American Airlines out of Columbia, South Carolina on Saturday morning and reported that the flight was oversold by 20 passengers. He suggests that 70 people checked in for a flight that only seated 50.
The airline’s gate agent had a unique threat to get passengers to make their way to Charlotte by car instead of plane: threatening that if there weren’t 20 volunteers to do this, then nobody would be flying and they’d cancel the flight instead. Apparently the threat worked, but it was a complete fabrication.
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 »
