The plane was over 5 hours late, and it sounds like a miserable experience for passengers, but not an instance addressed by the law. And that’s actually the problem.
A woman was removed from the American Airlines morning flight from New York JFK to London Heathrow this past Saturday after an altercation over her baby’s collapsible stroller. She says that a flight attendant, who objected to the stroller going in the overhead bin above her seat, assaulted her and sent her mother to the hospital.
In January 2021 I reported that American Express would open a Centurion lounge at Washington National airport, near the southern end of the B concourse. The entire terminal, with the exception of the A concourse (“banjo”) is connected behind security, so this will be accessible to eligible passengers flying on most airlines (all except Southwest, Frontier, and Air Canada). It’s been more than two and a half years, though, and there’s mostly been crickets.
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.
United Airlines launched its Polaris business class product seven years ago. This was both a new soft product – meals, blankets, amenities – and a new seat or hard product.
United Airlines is launching Polaris 2.0 on September 20th, a refresh of the airline’s soft product. Employees are being given a mandatory one hour course on the new product.
At the TD Cowen Global Transportation Conference, airline CFO Gerald Laderman said there are “no imminent plans” to move their headquarters, noting that the airline has “a long-term lease at Willis Tower. We’ve been there for decades in Chicago. Denver is like Houston. We have lots of facilities in Houston.”
On Friday night a Delta Air Lines flight from Atlanta to Barcelona had to turn around after a passenger let loose diarrhea all the way through the aircraft.
Passengers returned to Atlanta and waited while Delta cleaned the aircraft and found a new crew (as the original one timed out). They were sent on their way using the same plane at 2:57 a.m. Saturday morning. Video has now come out showing the inside of the aircraft.
Hilton and Tesla have entered into a deal to add up to 20,000 Tesla Universal Wall Connectors to 2,000 U.S., Canada, and Mexico properties, with a minimum of 6 per hotel. These charging stations will work with other electric vehicles as well, though consumers will need to download the Tesla app to use them. This project will begin next year and take several years to complete.
In 2019, the oneworld alliance which includes American Airlines, Alaska, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and more, announced plans for its first alliance-wide lounge. This was going to be at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. The pandemic and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put that plan on hold, with Russian carrier S7 suspended from the alliance.
However construction is now underway on a oneworld alliance lounge in Seoul.
Air France KLM’s Flying Blue is already the best frequent flyer program in SkyTeam. And it’s relevant to Americans because every major points transfer program partners with Air France KLM, making their points easy to get, and there are even frequent transfer bonuses.
Their points are about to get more value since Air France KLM and Etihad have announced a new partnership.
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 »
