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.
Moving walkways help you traverse long distances in airports quickly. It’s understandable, though, that many passengers may not remember how they work if they’ve been away from travel for a long time.
This woman moves slowly while being passed on the right – but it’s worth watching for what happens nine seconds into the video.
American Airlines is re-opening its Flagship international business class lounges and most of its Flagship First Dining this fall, starting with Miami. They’re also re-opening all of their Admirals Clubs except Honolulu this summer. And they’re going to introduce a new way for premium passengers to access Flagship.
That’s wonderful because these lounges were fantastic. United’s Polaris lounges were probably a step above American’s Flagship lounges, but Flagship lounges were open to many more people and nicer than anything American had ever done before. American’s Flagship First Dining product was nicer than anything any U.S. airline has done in recent years, period.
Americans have gotten fatter, and that’s making a big difference for airline operations. Each aircraft has a maximum weight it can take off with, and the weight of passengers and cargo contributes to how much fuel a plane is going to burn on a trip.
American Airlines this week updated its passenger weight assumptions. That’s going to mean they need more fuel for some trips. It even means that some aircraft will be ‘weight restricted’ and not allowed to carry a full load of passengers and cargo.
American Express issues a small business card with Amazon, and Synchrony Financial issues the Amazon store card. Both issuers are bidding on the Amazon consumer co-brand business.
This morning American Airlines flight AA881 from Charlotte to Cancun was forced to return to Charlotte – before heading back out to Cancun. Multiple reports of the incident suggested that a passenger on board hadn’t cleared TSA security. In one version it was an employee, and in another version a non-rev flying on a buddy pass.
In April the U.S. State Department issued ‘Do Not Travel’ warnings for 80% of the world’s countries due to coronavirus risk. They suddenly discovered the pandemic more than three months into 2021.
They updated their guidance to conform to CDC recommendations. But now the CDC has suddenly discovered vaccines – and is updating their guidance, too. The State Department will follow. And a new working group has been formed to talk about lifting travel restrictions where those restrictions are absurd based on the data.
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.
On Saturday an American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX managed to stop itself after a bird strike while accelerating during its takeoff roll Saint Vincent, as aircraft N339SU prepared for a trip to Miami.
Numerous plane spotters were filming the takeoff from runway 22 as the crew rejected takeoff and managed to stop the aircraft prior to reaching the end of the runway.
Star Alliance member Ethiopian Airlines had an issue with a Boeing 777 that they converted from passenger service over to cargo last week. When flight ET3905 flown by aircraft ET-ASL landed in Lagos, Nigeria it went off the taxiway… and its left hand landing gear went into the mud.
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 »
