American Airlines Took Full Ticket Rules Off Its Website. The DOT May Investigate Why

by Gary Leff

Sep 09 2020

A formal Department of Transportation complaint has been filed (.pdf) against American Airlines over the removal of their general tariff from their website in June.

American used to have its full ‘terms and conditions’ available online. They’ve removed the legalese entirely from their website and now offer a plain language FAQ-style conditions of carriage page. However there’s still a general tariff, and customers effectively agree to it when they buy a ticket. They just can’t see it or read it.

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United Airlines Offers 30 Clues For New Routes They’ll Be Announcing Tomorrow

by Gary Leff

Sep 08 2020

At 10 a.m. Central time (11 a.m. Eastern) on Wednesday United is making a big route announcement, and they’re dropping hints – they say there are 30 clues – in a video posted to social media.

Here’s the video, and some of the hints they’re dropping. There’ll almost certainly be new transatlantic service from Washington Dulles, Newark, and Chicago. A Boeing 767-300ER is involved. And there’s a new ultra-long haul route with a Boeing 787-9, could United actually fly to Bangkok?

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Man Pleads Guilty In American Airlines Gift Card Scam

by Gary Leff

american airlines planes
Sep 08 2020

A man pled guilty today and is expected to get probation after scamming American Airlines out of $160,000 in tickets paid for with gift cards.

Billy Schwarze booked travel for friends and family. He bought gift cards to pay for the tickets, and then refunded the tickets – to his own credit card. This cost American $160,000 “and his friends and associates..$20,000.”

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Airlines Left Out Of Latest Stimulus Plan

by Gary Leff

Sep 08 2020

When calculating the cost of ‘jobs saved’ for six months via a ‘clean extension’ of CARES Act payroll support, we were looking at a cost of $333,333 per job since most of the money goes to fund payroll that airlines will have whether a bill passes or not. In other words it funds $200,000+ a year pilots and it funds the salaries of executive management, having taxpayers pick up the tab rather than shareholders and creditors.

Now though against actual announced furloughs we’re looking at a cost of about $625,000 per job saved – and many of those will just mean job losses six months down the road.

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Man Uses Can Of Pringles Chips To Avoid Mask Requirement On Four Hour Flight

by Gary Leff

Sep 08 2020

A passenger on an easyJet flight from Manchester to Tenerife used what some might call the Ted Cruz exception, milking a single food or beverage item for the full flight to take advantage of airline rules allowing passengers to go maskless while eating or drinking.

He says he doesn’t actually have an issue with masks, it was just an experiment to see if he could get away with it: he bought a can of Pringles potato chips on the flight, and spread 100 chips out across the length of the flight, making each chip last two and a half minutes.

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Passenger Airdrops Porn, Delaying Flight To Phoenix

by Gary Leff

airline cabin
Sep 07 2020

On this delayed flight to Phoenix someone was airdropping porn from their iPhone. A flight attendant made an announcement telling parents to make sure kids with iphones have their bluetooth turned off, and that their setting won’t allow receiving files from people not on their contact list.

Airlines have delay codes for weather, mechanical, crew availability and a host of other reasons. This may be the first flight, however, that was delayed by porn.

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