Starting Tuesday LAX airport will begin to do temperature screenings at the Tom Bradley International Terminal as people enter the airport and in the arrivals corridor using thermal imaging cameras. This is similar to what I’ve experienced, for instance, in Hong Kong for over 15 years.
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.
Hyatt is offer 20% off plus breakfast for loyalty program members, adding to an aggressive drive to put heads in beds that includes triple points and cancelling stays up to 24 hours prior to check-in.
On June 8th American Airlines eliminated iSolve, the tool frontline employees used to compensate customers for things like broken seats and missing meals. Instead they told employees to ‘de-escalate the situation’ and make customers happy – as long as they gave them nothing.
On June 16th, it turns out, they pulled the plug on paper compensation vouchers as well. And in the worst of corporate doublespeak, they’re telling employees they did this “to provide consistency for our customers.” No matter what the channel is, you get nothing!
TSA is rolling out the “Credential Authentication Technology” (CAT) tool broadly. They check both the authenticity of the document and whether the information matches what they have for the passenger’s ‘Secure Flight’ data in their reservation (name, date of birth, gender). If it isn’t a match, the passenger is sent over to the airline to get things sorted.
However since passengers no longer need a boarding pass when this system is in use, they’re proceeding past the security checkpoint without first checking in for their flight
When this became available last year for AAdvantage, and with other airlines rolling this out to reservations, I’d just assumed American was already doing this for secure flight. It surprised me to see they only just rolled it out.
Germany’s Die Welt is reporting that the head of Lufthansa’s cabin crew union demanded “one million euros from Lufthansa” to agree to “job losses and reduced pay” for members as part of the airline’s restructuring and bailout.
The union, for its part, denies these claims as it fights to minimize the thousands of jobs that are expected to be lost at Lufthansa.
You may be familiar with — and even outraged by — the famous lawsuit against McDonald’s by Stella Liebeck who was burned by hot coffee.
The jury’s $2.7 million award has long been a poster child for tort reform (the judge actually reduced her award to $480,000). That lawsuit brought change though – albeit not to United Airlines.
This is hardly peak tourist season for Dubai, with daily temperatures averaging about 100 degrees. Still, staying somewhere like Al Maha Desert Resort seems fantastic for social distancing. You get your own standalone villa with your own private pool. When I was there you could choose to take all of your meals in-villa too as part of the resort’s all-inclusive approach. And redemptions are available every day using Marriott points.
An Italian customer wrote to Emirates customer service to complain about a flight attendant who was texting using her phone while sitting in the jump seat. He said he’s a Skywards Platinum member, and he was going to complain broadly in social media unless he received compensation. Emirates fired the flight attendant.
Cabin crew, though, doxed the guy and also have been gossiping about him claiming he steals salt and pepper shakers from aircraft and tries to scam ‘to go’ bottles of wine. They want flight attendants to be on the lookout for the guy, looking out for him taking phtoos inflight (since he took a photo of the flight attendant he complained about) because UAE law places restrictions on photography of others.
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 »
