Security lines at Austin-Bergstrom stretched outside the terminal before dawn Friday, and plenty of travelers assumed the partial government shutdown was already disrupting screening. That wasn’t it. The real problem was a predictable surge from Spring Break and the tail end of South By Southwest colliding with slower TSA procedures and an agency that still does a poor job staffing for obvious spikes in demand.
American Airlines shut down airport customer service counters, but at Washington National the counter and signage were still sitting there when flights were canceled — sending passengers to line up for help that no longer existed. Also a Delta passenger’s lost $9,000 watch, Finnair blowing up a Hawaii award sweet spot, and the Dutch king’s final KLM 737 flight.
Citi new Strata Elite card delivers a surprisingly strong first-year value play. The current offer combines 75,000 points with up to $1,200 in travel credits, and those points can now transfer directly to American Airlines AAdvantage.
Southwest used to make this simple for passengers of size: get an extra seat and usually receive a refund after travel. Now the airline can publicly flag travelers, make them buy a second seat at walk-up prices
Ryanair spent months refusing to pay a delayed passenger money she was legally owed, until an Austrian court bailiff walked onto one of its Boeing 737s and put the aircraft under seizure. The debt was just $1,182, but the scene at Linz Airport turned a routine turnaround into a warning about what can happen when airlines ignore passenger compensation orders.
United flight attendants appear close to finally getting a new contract after more than five years without a raise, but the price of that deal may be something unions almost never surrender: scope. A reported trade for pay on the ground could give United room to own a regional airline outright.
American Airlines customer service agents have filed a class action attempt alleging the company routinely took unpaid labor—auto-deducted lunch breaks even when agents kept working, and timekeeping “rounding” that shaved minutes off the start and end of shifts. The catch is that airlines often sit in a special federal carve-out that can block overtime claims entirely, so the lawsuit may turn less on whether the conduct happened and more on whether the law even lets them recover.
Emirates and Qatar are still flying some remarkably light loads as traffic to Dubai and Doha dries up during the regional conflict. In at least two reported cases, passengers found themselves with what travelers almost never get: an entire first or business class cabin effectively to themselves.
A short boarding video from an American Airlines flight captures two things at once: a flight attendant sees a phone aimed at a woman in front of the camera and quickly checks whether the pair are traveling together, defusing what looks like a potentially creepy situation. But the same clip also fuels the familiar complaint about American’s onboard culture — the front-galley posture and tone read as “couldn’t care less,” even while she’s trying to do something genuinely situationally aware.
United’s Polaris amenity kit is branded so heavily “Brooks Brothers” that you can miss the airline’s name entirely—and that’s not an accident. It’s because of the economics of these kits: in many partnerships the brand is subsidizing (or outright paying for) the pouch and products to get captive exposure to high-income travelers.
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 »
