A woman picked up a Subway sandwich in the Singapore airport before her flight to Perth, Australia. She only ate half of it – and for some reason brought the leftovers with her. Perhaps she wanted to find out first hand just how sick an unrefrigerated fast food sandwich will make you after a five hour flight.
She failed to declare the remains of her foot long at customs when she arrived back in Australia, and was fined ~ US$1750.
U.S. immigration deported an Australian woman after repeatedly asking her whether she’s had an abortion. They suspected her of planning to cat sit while vacationing in Canada as well as on a future visit to the U.S.
A family of 9 passengers says that American Airlines ran a schedule change, and rebooked their return flight from a different country without telling them. They checked their seat assignments online – it’s always important to garden your reservations and check that nothing has changed – and found that their return trip was all wrong (and they weren’t sitting together on the wrong flights, either!).
When Alaska Airlines shared the other day that they’re celebrating their 90th birthday by giving each employee 90,000 Mileage Plan miles I passed on this news and joked that they were helping their employees learn how difficult it has become to use their miles. There’s a certain truth to this, and it’s actually to the airline’s benefit!
If your bag fits in the sizer at the gate, you can take it on board, because its dimensions are within the rules your airline has set for carry ons. At least that is how it is supposed to work.
Passengers bring things that don’t fit all the time, and gate agents don’t enforce the rules until they do. But if challenged, the sizer is supposed to be a neutral arbiter. One passenger decided to take this to the extreme.
Three months ago a South African Airways Airbus A330 from Accra, Ghana to Johannesburg reported both engines surging while over Botswana. The aircraft, with 209 people on board, continued the final 50 minutes to Johannesburg even as surges continued on final approach.
Reportedly the airline had just changed fuel suppliers in Accra. And after water had been drained from the fuel system, the aircraft was signed off for a ferry flight back to South Africa – with no passengers – but a full complement of passengers was loaded anyway.
there’s good value here. It presaged the Hyatt-SLH partnership, and offers the opportunity to credit cheap Las Vegas midweek stays for elite status. I also hope this promotion drives a lot of business to MGM since I’ve heard rumblings out of MGM that they’ve been somewhat ambivalent about the partnership.
Of course Hyatt will be gaining a bigger foothold in Vegas in its own right, bringing multiple brands to prime real estate as part of the renovation and rebranding of the old 2500-room Rio.
Delta just cares about its customers so darned much and wanted to fly them when they were interested in travel again so the airline ‘stretched’ and pushed themselves too darned hard. Now they need to give themselves a break, not hold themselves to the same standard of flying so many trips, in order to sort things out.
Here Bastian is just like the job candidate who answers the question, “what’s your greatest weakness?” with “I work too hard, and don’t focus enough on outside interests.”
Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles is most known among frequent flyer aficionados for its inexpensive redemptions on United flights. For instance first class to the Caribbean or Hawaii is just 12,500 miles one-way on United when redeeming Turkish miles. However Turkish is so much more than this. They charge comparably few miles and offer more award space to those using their miles than is offered to partner programs.
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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 »
