Baltimore/Washington International airport is named for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. But that’s not the interesting part of its name.
It was once known as Friendship International airport and its airport code was a logical BAL for Baltimore. Before Washington Dulles opened jets that were too large for National airport went to Baltimore.
The U.S. doesn’t require most Europeans to get a visa to come here. They do, however, have to register online in advance and get an approved “ESTA.” Which is like an electronic visa! It’s just that the process we put people through to get something we actually call a visa is much, much worse.
Europe is responding in kind and creating their own online registration system that residents of much of the world will have to use before being allowed to enter. It’s called ETIAS, for the European Travel Information and Authorization System.
In 1971 Southwest Airlines had just won a legal victory that would allow them to fly. Their first big investor joined the board of the company. And he had two ideas for what they should do. Southwest would have been a very different company, and air travel in the U.S. would have been very different.
As a general rule airlines don’t let you change the name on a ticket. If you could swap names, you could resell tickets, and that would undermine airline pricing strategies that try to charge more for the kind of last minute travel usually purchased by business travelers.
That’s also why airlines started insisting on ID’ing travelers, to make sure their tickets weren’t being resold.
However name corrections are often possible. Here’s what to do.
The Ambassador program was a paid program, and you had to be a member to qualify for its invitation-only level Royal Ambassador. But when you made Royal Ambassador you used to get a referral certificate to gift the status to someone else. And they got a referral certificate to give to someone else, and so on.
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 woman took to social media to talk about the condom that her mother found in her checked bag after a flight on American Airlines. She says that her mother “felt super violated.”
Baltimore Washington International Airport plans to drop the company running its concessions – restaurants and shops – in favor of a brand new company headed by a former state governor’s Chief of Staff, who will turn the actual work over to HMSHost. And the bidding process sure looks like it was rigged.
The Maryland Aviation Administration has selected New Market Development Joint Venture, LLC to replace Fraport which has managed concessions at BWI for 18 years. The company, owned by a former chief of staff to former Gov. Parris Glendening, has only existed for one year.
Chains have housekeeping standards for their properties, which include offering more service than they did at the depths of the pandemic, but that also offer a lot more leeway in not providing it. And some hotels take them up on these opportunities, though I’m not sure I’ve seen quite an aggressive stance, though, as the one taken by the Hyatt Place Frankfurt Airport.
If you don’t care about the environment, and are happy with Greta Thunberg scolding you for the rest of your days, then you can have your room serviced.
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 »
