Last summer American Airlines implemented an elegant solution for disinfecting planes. The chemical SurfaceWise2 was approved in Texas and was touted as killing viruses on surfaces for two weeks. There’d be no reason to spray planes as often during the pandemic.
It turns out the stuff may not actually work.
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.
Only 215 people per day are allowed to enter Sydney, Australia from overseas between July 14 and August 31.
As a result American Airlines will stop operating a passenger flight Los Angeles to Sydney starting July 12th (arriving the morning of July 14). They will, however, continue flying Sydney – Los Angeles.
Tomi Lahren, apparently, feels differently and reaches the Godwin’s law stage of the pandemic.
Hands up, don’t shoot. American Airlines “ordered passengers on a flight from Los Angeles to Miami on Wednesday to put their hands on their heads” for the last 45 to 60 minutes of the flight “because of a potential security threat.” On arrival in Miami, the plane was boarded by law enforcement with machine guns.
One man was arrested, but that wasn’t the end because when passengers were finally permitted to deplane they were held in the terminal.
The Emirates frequent flyer program has just introduced award redemption on its partner JetBlue. It’s easy to get Emirates points. And the award prices for JetBlue’s ‘Mint’ business class are surprisingly reasonable. You can often book JetBlue business class seats for more than one third fewer points than JetBlue would charge in its own program.
You can skip showing an ID altogether if you have CLEAR and are flying from a terminal where that service is offered. Your eyes or fingerprints are your ID instead.
But if you don’t have ID, perhaps you’ve lost it or forgotten it, you can still fly. TSA has procedures for that. A viral video tells you how.
A US passport is now as powerful as one from Rwanda thanks to Covid restrictions.
In normal times a U.S. passport offers “access [to] 187 destinations around the world.” That’s been cut to “fewer than 60 destinations – a passport power equivalent to that of Uzbekistan. US passport holders have a passport power equivalent to Rwanda.”
Airlines are rewriting history, pretending they used bailout money to be prepared to fly when they really pocketed it for themselves. And the ‘really bad stuff’ that would have happened without bailouts wasn’t ever true.
The narrrative matters because we’re going to see airlines back at the public trough again in the future. Investors know their downside is limited because taxpayers will always be there. And that’s abhorrent.
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.
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 »
