Refusing to allow family and friends to escort passengers to the gate and pick them up from their arriving gate is just one more barrier to millions of infrequent travelers from getting back on planes. And airside vendors are suffering from the reduced traffic. One airport is seeking to change that. “The way we see it, as long as they are screened, they pose no threat,” [Airport Manager Kelly] Johnson said.
Liar Liar Pants on Fire
Low fare (and profitable!) carrier JetBlue has developed Long Beach into it’s major West Coast facility. At town council meetings, though, there are constant complaints about noise and airport expansion. Long Beach residents are against JetBlue’s expansion. Or are they? JetBlue didn’t really believe the opposition was as widespread as vocal residents claimed. So they commissioned a study and most locals kind of like a convenient lowfare carrier building up flights. The results: Eighty-three percent of 900 registered voters surveyed agreed that Long Beach Airport is a “valuable asset’ because it stimulates the economy, enhances tourism, creates jobs and provides convenient transportation for residents and visitors. The survey showed 12 percent thought the airport should be closed because it creates traffic, increases the number of people coming into the city and degrades air quality. Another…
20,000 BA miles richer
Jaguar test drive miles posted overnight!
United Free Ticket Promotion
Register and fly 3 United roundtrips by September 30th (coach tickets can’t include a Saturday night stay) and earn a free roundtrip ticket. Up to 2 tickets can be earned this way.Naturally, the free ticket will not earn miles. Unfortunately, the free ticket cannot be upgraded. The ticket is good for the lower 48 states only.
Hidden Cities, Hidden Headlines
News of the Supreme Court’s decision to permit a class action lawsuit to go forward against Delta and Northwest is being overblown. Headlines like “Delta, Northwest lose appeal” make it sound as though the court was inclined to agree with the plaintiffs on the merits. The Supreme Court has simply refused to intervene — and the Supreme Court rarely intervenes — to stop the suit which alleges that barriers to “hidden city ticketing” are illegal. (Hidden City Ticketing refers to when a passenger books an itinerary that takes them farther than their final destination but doesn’t take the last leg of their journey in order to receive a lower fare.) If the case reaches a jury, public anger against the airlines will be on the side of the plaintiffs. But the most likely outcome is…
United’s Not-so-great Offer
The United Great Offer (offering bonus status miles for faxing competitors’ frequent flyer statements and flying marginal segments at fares other than the lowest) makes the news. What the story doesn’t cover is all of the confusion that the offer has wrought. It’s still unclear whether only marginal flight segments have to be at higher fares, or the initial flight segments that match previous flight history also. Noone at United seems to really know, and customer service continues to provide conflicting answers.
The return of private screeners?
As a result of all of the incompetence and mismanagement at the TSA, the federal government is considering allowing some airports to return to private screeners next year. It’s still in the idea stage, and there’s opposition. Let’s just keep flooding the zone!
Don’t screw up
These may be “all too obvious,” but Christopher Elliott offers some important business lunch pitfalls to avoid. Hint, don’t drink too much.
The end of miles and the last man
Chris Woodyard sees sees the end of our obsession with miles because Fliers are under pressure from their employers to shop around for the lowest fare, regardless of carrier, making it more difficult to collect miles on a single airline. Airlines are slowly eroding the value of miles by raising award levels or making it more difficult to find flights to use miles. Low-fare carriers offer deep discounts on routes that make it easier and cheaper to just pay the fare rather than shell out miles for a trip. The points Woodyard raises are true. Miles are supposed to create brand loyalty for what is essentially a commodity product. In a down economy, businesses are forcing employees to choose based on price and — spurred by lowfare carriers — the airlines are obliging them. There…
A routine TSA story, or the makings of a scandal?
The TSA selected a passenger for secondary screening prior to departure in Baltimore. He didn’t wait for them to finish. He took his carryon and left, boarded his flight, and took off for Pittsburgh. The TSA did a “reverse screening” of all of the deplaning passengers in Pittsburgh. 100 passengers were delayed for two hours. They checked each person leaving the plane, ostensibly because the passenger might have passed whatever they thought he may have had off to somebody else. (Of course, it could have been passed to anyone else in the terminal boarding any other flight — shouldn’t they have evacuated the whole Baltimore airport?) The curious thing is that the TSA procedures permitted the passenger to walk away. But they knew which flight he was on. But they didn’t send anyone to that…
