Against All Odds: Alaska Airline Passenger’s iPhone Plummets from the Sky – And Emerges Unscathed

by Gary Leff

Jan 08 2024

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.

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Exposed: The Fierce Battle Over Cockpit Privacy – Unveiling Pilot Union Resistance to Key Safety Reforms

by Gary Leff

Jan 08 2024

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.

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Which Airlines Serve The Best Wine, In The Air And On The Ground?

by Gary Leff

Jan 07 2024

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.

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American Airlines Gate Agent’s Bold Bluff: I’ll Cancel This Flight Unless 20 Of You Drive Instead

by Gary Leff

Jan 06 2024

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.

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United’s New 2024 Status Match: Your Golden Ticket to Elite Perks

by Gary Leff

Jan 06 2024

United Airlines’ elite status rules for 2024 see only minor adjustments, with the most notable change being the enhanced role of credit card spending in status qualification, not as extensive as American or Delta. Additionally, United’s response to Delta’s controversial changes includes maintaining its status match offer, leading to a surge in requests following Delta’s initial announcement of more stringent elite status qualifications and lounge access. Now their status match offer is back.

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