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.
A Boeing 737 was taken out of storage, flown (apparently illegally) into Bulgaria and then while supposedly being flown to the U.A.E. it declared an emergency over Iran – and some claim it was a ‘hijacking’.
The plane went missing over Iranian airspace, the airline has been silent about the incident, and there’s now speculation that the whole thing was a ruse by Fly Armenia Airways – a new airline that doesn’t appear to operate any flights – to sell the plane to an Iranian carrier in contravention of economic sanctions.
During the pandemic American Airlines accelerated the removal of seat back video screens from its Boeing 737 aircraft. While other airlines aggressively clamped down on capital spending, American ramped up its effort to add seats to its planes – reducing the amount of space per passenger, even in
first class – and take out the screens.
Now there is just one Boeing 737-800 left with seat back entertainment: N981NN. And unfortunately you won’t be able to fly on it, because it’s been in storage in Miami since November 23, 2020 and is about to be sent in to be retrofit.
Tarco Aviation flight 3T-234 from Khartoum, Sudan to Doha was forced to turn back around half an hour into its flight on Wednesday after “a cat attacked the pilot.”
A passenger at the Minneapolis airport started harassing those around her, scolding them and calling stupid for wearing masks. She confronted a black couple. Then a cop came over to break it up – by grabbing the Black woman’s arm.
Other passengers had to intervene to get through to the cop and make him “realizes it was actually the white woman who was causing the trouble.” The black woman “who was originally targeted by police believes she was a victim of racial profiling,” ya think?
A passenger has been sentenced to 14 months of incarceration after going off on a “foul mouthed tirade mouth tirade…call[ing] an Italian flight attendant a “fascist” while making racist Roman salutes, repeatedly refused to wear a face mask and strok[ing] the arm of another flight attendant who[m] he also threatened to punch.”
His excuse according to his lawyer? He was too drunk to remember any of this, after drinking so much vodka straight from his own bottle.
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.
If you’re a resident of California, and not already a member of Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, you can join and get a free intra-state trip. Technically what they’re offering is a $0.01 base fare, plus taxes.
Frontier Airlines cancelled its Miami – New York LaGuardia flight 2878 Sunday evening over a mask incident. The airline says that a ‘large group’ of passengers wouldn’t wear masks. The family, and some other passengers, dispute that characterization – say it was a maskless 18 month old who triggered the incident which caused the planeload of passengers to be rebooked for this morning.
With Chinese airlines off the table for MAX aircraft acquisitions, and Boeing struggling more generally, United clearly got much more favorable pricing than the standard 50% off of list to do this deal, and to do it now during the pandemic. United hasn’t aggressively retired aircraft types during the pandemic, either – so while they’ve been due for a fleet refresh timing on their end is somewhat more flexible than it otherwise would be as well.
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 »
