Hilton may be planning to build a hotel in China over a bulldozed Uyghur mosque. The Chinese government has engaged in ethnic cleaning against the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, detaining approximately a million people over the past 5 years and subjecting them to abuse and re-education, forcing them to denounce their religion.
The situation begins as the agent and passenger have a confrontation over her bag at the bottom of the jet bridge, in front of the aircraft’s boarding door. The woman has words with him, not wanting to give up the bag. They both have their hands on the bag, wrestling for it as the woman tries to board even as she’s told she can’t bring it on. And the words escalate to violence, as she lunges at the employee.
Finally the employee grabs the bag and starts taking it up the jet bridge. The passenger latches onto it, and starts to get dragged with it.
When David Dao was dragged off of a United Express aircraft and bloodied, the carrier outsourced the dirty work to Chicago Aviation Police.
The TSA, though, has a program to teach flight attendants how to do this themselves. It’s been suspended during the pandemic. But the TSA announced today that they are bringing it back because of the rise of onboard incidents, mostly centered around masks.
According to American Airlines CEO Doug Parker, in a meeting with flight attendants (a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing), alcohol will be back in economy cabins starting September 13th. Parker tied bringing booze back in economy to the end of the federal mask mandate.
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.
Many American AAdvantage members who do not have any status at all are being gifted an elite level, upgrades, and a quick path to even earn the Executive Platinum level – with less flying and spending than the airline requires from current elites.
Peter Espinosa flew first class from Minneapolis to Dallas on Delta with his 20 year old daughter who has genetic disorder Fragile X Syndrome. They were headed to visit his son – her brother – for Father’s Day.
A flight attendant saw a Hispanic man with a woman young enough to be his daughter and questioned her. The syndrome makes her nervous. So police met the aircraft and arrested him.
In the June 23 Airlines Confidential podcast, former Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza lays out his framework for the circumstances under which to expect airline frequent flyer programs to devalue. He sees strong airline credit card performance as working against devaluation, which I think is incorrect, and he sees the future of business travel doing a lot to determine the value of miles.
An 18 year old woman says she was groped by a male passenger on her Spirit Airlines flight for an hour. She took video! And she says flight attendants told her to “sit down and stay quiet” when she reported it.
It took just one day but Frontier Airlines is dropping its ‘Covid Recovery’ surcharge. It had explained the extra fee tacked on to tickets as covering the cost of cleaning (as though their planes aren’t expected to be clean otherwise) and personal protective equipment for employees (as though airline safety wasn’t the airline’s responsibility).
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 »
