ASIA

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Air Conditioned Planes in High Humidity Can Cause This to Happen

smoke filling airline cabin
Jun 21 2018

Air Asia flight 5583 from Kolkata to Bagdogra — a 277 mile flight — was 4.5 hours for mechanical reasons. After 90 minutes passengers were asked to get off the aircraft. It was pouring down rain and people didn’t want to leave.

Air conditioning on board aircraft will mist in highly humid conditions. Passengers contend that the captain turned up the air conditioning in order to smoke them out since they didn’t want to leave.

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Report: Malaysia Airlines Waives $4200 in Checked Baggage Fees for Ex-Prime Minister Facing Corruption Charges

chart
Jun 21 2018

Malaysia’s recently ousted Prime Minister Najib Razak cannot leave the country while he faces corruption charges. He took his family on holiday to Langkawi and apparently took quite a lot of baggage on the trip.

He’s a Platinum member of the Malaysia Airlines Enrich status. One imagines whether he meets the criteria or not that he’d have this status. And his Platinum appears to come with a very special perk. His reservation shows that he checked 535kg of luggage and had the 17,000 Malaysia Ringgit excess baggage fee waived.

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Flying on Separate Tickets? On American You’re Still Protected if Flights Go Wrong

american airline plane
Jun 19 2018

It’s usually risky to fly one itinerary on separate tickets. That’s because when you’re on one ticket, if you face a flight delay or cancellation the airline responsible for the irregularity has to get you to your final destination. But if you’re on separate tickets they usually don’t — they just have to get you as far as the end of the ticket you’re flying them on.

But it’s not always a risk if you know about this American Airlines policy.

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Biggest Starwood Points Sale Before the Program Effectively Ends Next Month

hotel lobby
Jun 17 2018

Starwood is offering a 35% discount on buying Starpoints through July 20. They’re actually letting you buy points at a price which those points are worth which is great.

Technically Starwood Preferred Guest will still exists August 1, but that’s a legal distinction. Marriott, Starwood, and Ritz-Carlton will all have the same program at this point just with different names because contractual issues prevent them from calling it one program. For all intents and purposes though this is the last sale of Starpoints qua Starpoints.

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What Are the Least Racist Airports to Go Through US Immigration?

passport getting stamped
Jun 16 2018

There’s no question that immigration and customs develops a different culture and reputation at different airports in the U.S. While you’d hope they would apply standards and procedures from their handbook uniformly, there’s a difference between de facto practice and de jure rules.

People learn procedures by watching other people, and by discussing how to go about doing their jobs with colleagues. In other words, customs and immigration procedures are carried out by people.

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How Just a Few Bad Employees Can Undermine $3 Billion Invested in Airline Product

one world plane
Jun 08 2018

American highlights a $3 billion investment in products and services. However poor service from the airline’s front line can undermine all the rest of the investment.

A great example of this comes from June 4th’s American Airlines flight AA192 from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. A business class passenger reportedly voluntarily offloaded himself because his experience with a flight attendant onboard prior to departure was so bad.

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$500 Million to Fix Lagging Sheratons

hotel bed
Jun 06 2018

Three years ago Starwood announced a $100 million effort to revitalize the Sheraton brand. This was mostly about marketing investment, but they made some tweaks using the Sheraton ‘Grand’ moniker and a carrot and stick approach with fees and incentives, to try to get hotel owners to invest in their properties.

They promised to improve the offerings in club lounges, improve hotel design, and bring on new properties. This was back when the chain was still trying to grow on its own even though the board had largely decided to sell.

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