A passenger stormed Delta Air Lines gate D7 at the Atlanta airport, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and came out spraying. According to a witness, the woman dined and dashed from Buffalo Wild Wings. When she was asked to pay she unleashed herself on the rest of the terminal.
An American Airlines Airbus A319 had a near miss at Washington’s Reagan National airport on Wednesday. Flight 2134 to Boston was cleared for takeoff on runway 1, while a King Air was cleared to land. Air traffic control realized their mistake, cancelling takeoff clearance for the American Airlines flight – and telling the King Air to abort and go around. They couldn’t because they were already on the ground.
I hate tipping. Full stop. I much prefer a model where employees are compensated by their employers and prices are advertised at a fixed amount and that’s the amount you pay.
It’s hard enough dealing with tipping expectations here in the U.S. What do you do — as a traveler where you may not understand the local custom? Not worry so much about it.
American produced a film to promote travel by air in 1933. Few could afford to fly. American declared, “All seats are first class seats, all passengers first class passengers.” Back then “One of the grandest voyages imaginable is this trip from Chicago to New York.”
Vasu Raja is out at American Airlines. He had a bold view of the world of aviation, and wasn’t afraid to break things. But at large public companies, you can only do that if you succeed.
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.
There’s a secret spot in the Austin airport that two travelers found for a sleep – the American Airlines Admirals Club, and you don’t actually have to be a member.
Bloomberg is reporting that Vasu Raja was let go by American Airlines because of a Bain consulting report saying that corporate customers and travel management companies were unhappy with American’s new systems that hey were supposed to be using. My understanding is that this is inaccurate.
Friday’s United Airlines Newark to Dubrovnik flight was reportedly oversold in business class. United doesn’t normally sell more tickets in business class than they have seats, and it doesn’t appear that the aircraft was swapped to one with a smaller business class cabin.
Nobody would take the airline’s generous offers of compensation, even though “[t]hey offered 2500 and then 3000.”
Southwest Airlines doesn’t offer assigned seats, although that may be changing with a premium seat offering expected to be announced this fall.
In the meantime, even though they do not sell seat assignments, they still manage to earn hundreds of millions of dollars each year on their seats.
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 »
