NFL great Hardy Nickerson was downgraded from first class to coach on an American Airlines flight from Charlotte to San Francisco on Tuesday, along with his wife and son.
The five-time NFL Pro-Bowler and four-time NFL All-Pro linebacker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers took to social media to complain about how the situation was handled, noting that his family is black and everyone else in first class was white.
CLEAR is a private, fee-based service that takes your biometrics and lets you identify yourself with your fingerprints or retina scan instead of showing an ID. At airports where they’re located you can then skip to the front of the security line – whether PreCheck or regular security.
But the TSA now says CLEAR’s systems have a security vulnerability and some key lawmakers want everyone using CLEAR to still have to have their IDs verified at the security checkpoint.
The FAA’s NOTAM system, which alerts about procedures and risks in flight, went down and the failure has led to hours-long delays and possible flight cancellations even as the air travel delay begins.
Several hundred delays have already been logged domestically before 6 a.m. Eastern. The FAA reports that “Technicians are currently working to restore the system,” but had no further comment beyond what was listed on their website.
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.
Qatar has one of the best business class product in the world in its ‘QSuites’ that offer doors and movable partitions that allow two and even four passengers to travel together in their own space.
Right now there’s fantastic award availability at the end of the booking window. You can use this for travel from the U.S. to Doha and beyond to the Mideast, India, the Maldives and even to Africa.
The World Health Organization is recommending that countries re-institute masking on long haul flights, tying the policy to the XBB.1.5 subvariant of Covid-19 and should apply to “passengers arriving from anywhere where there is widespread COVID-19 transmission”.
WHO does not, however, indiscriminately recommend pre-departure testing for Covid-19.
Once you’re on the bus you can usually be confident that you’ll at least make the plane. I’ve never seen passengers miss a flight once on the bus.
Yet somehow Indian low cost carrier Go First boarded passengers on a 1058 mile flight from Bangalore to Delhi onto a bus and then forgot them. Reportedly 55 passengers were left behind. Four buses were used for the flight, but only three bus loads of passengers actually made it into the cabin.
There’s no current first quarter promotion from Hyatt that all members can take advantage of across their brands. However Hyatt is running a series of targeted promotions. You can check whether you’re eligible, and offers include free night certificates, suite upgrade awards, bonus points and triple points.
Dubbed United NEXT, the fleet plan was ambitious and positioned the airline as a more premium airline. And then… nothing happened. A year and a half passed and they didn’t actually do any of the retrofitting of their existing planes to offer more premium seats, seat back TV with bluetooth, and fast internet as they’d promised. There was hand waving about supply chain.
That’s finally changing.
Right now there’s an amazing transatlantic business class deal originating in Europe. You can book business class roundtrip itineraries for less than $500. And this is amazing for people in the U.S., too – just book an award ticket or cheap coach fare to Europe, then book a series of roundtrips that start in Europe. At this price, why not go more than once?
You can fly across the British Airways network to places like New York; Washington DC; Austin; Las Vegas; Philadelphia and Seattle. And you can start in cities like Dublin; Paris; Nice; Bucharest; Dusseldorf; and more. Try your favorite European cities and British Airways destinations in the U.S.
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 »
