A woman boarded a Southwest Airlines flight to New Orleans without a ticket trying to see a Beyonce’ on tour.
The flight’s manifest has one fewer passenger on it than there were on the plane. According to one report the flight was sold out and there were more people on the plane than seats.
What on earth is a “Hospitality Charge,” as seen at Bruegger’s Bagels in the Minneapolis airport? There’s signage explaining that a 4.5% surcharge is added on top of menu prices to cover ‘hospitality’ but also explains that this is not a tip and does not go to workers.
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American Airlines informed employees on Tuesday about the death of a 25 year veteran Los Angeles-based flight attendant who had been working a trip and laying over in Philadelphia.
A co-pilot snorted coke off of a woman’s breasts the night before a Johannesburg – London flight last month and put details of a substance-fueled orgy in writing in a series of texts to a flight attendant before trying to work the trip home. She reported it and the flight was cancelled. He was drug tested on arrival back in London and fired.
A GTT representative told me that American is blaming “the industry’s operational deficiencies on its business partners and others.” But it seems like what it’s doing is trying to clean up those deficiencies!
While “GTT values the company’s decades-long relationship with American and” wants to keep selling American Airlines tickets, maybe the emphasis ought to be on the victims of the travel scams run through their systems, rather than claiming they themselves are the victim?
In Mel Brooks’ “The Producers,” Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder intentionally produce a flop on Broadway. They oversold shares in the production many times, and planned to run away with investors’ money. In the 1967 film “Springtime For Hitler and Germany” was an ironic, surprise smash hit. In 2023, Delta’s changes to the SkyMiles program are producing equal and opposite amounts of outrage.
Recently-announced Delta SkyMiles changes to elite status have underscored for me that stretching to earn top status just no longer makes sense for most people. If you are hub captive, and flying one airline enough anyway to earn status-fine. But what does top tier get you? The real sweet spot is mid-tier status anyway.
American Airlines is dropping New York LaGuardia to Kansas City for November through March (and possibly beyond). They had been operating two regional jets daily. They are also dropping New York LaGuardia to Houston Intercontinental for November through March (and possibly beyond).
The airline’s LaGuardia departures are down 13% compared to 9 months earlier and that is even as American is getting slots back from JetBlue with the unwinding of the partnership between the two carriers.
Just because you fly a premium class doesn’t mean that you have class.
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 »
