News and notes from around the interweb:
- The Trump Organization is exploring a sale of the Trump Hotel in DC
- Apple spends so much money on United Airlines travel that they may help the carrier redesign its San Francisco terminal
- Woman pretends to be pregnant to avoid carry on bag fees
- TSA passing judgment on the validity of adoption “Show me your papers” is scarier for some families than others.
- With load factor way down Cathay Pacific is giving free coach tickets to employees to travel across Asia.
- The Secret Service wants flights approaching Washington National to fly over Virginia instead of straight up the river.
- KLM starts flying to St. Maarten again today.
Awesome video of the landing at DCA. Thanks for posting it!
Why wouldn’t Cathay open up award seats they are tighter than a hens ###
I booked JAL instead happily.At least Ill be more comfortable in the first class beds
Post 9/11 DCA was closed, and there was a discussion about closing it for good, with all DC-based flights moving to IAD. IAD supposedly was built for this purpose in the first place, as DCA traffic and parking has been a headache for decades. But the politicos and big money folks in DC would never let DCA close, and air travelers continue to suffer today. American should hand out extra miles to passengers for their gate 35X cattle bus experience. On a clear day flying in to DCA the window view is one of the few perks of travel to this airport. Now, 18 years post-911, it’s suddenly considered a security concern? Look forward to extra surcharges to be put in place by the airlines flying out of their way through VA to approach DCA.
I had a similar TSA experience last year traveling with my son (who was adopted from Ethiopia) out of Atlanta. The screener asked a long list of questions to my 8 year-old son about his identity, our relationship, and where we were traveling from/to. While I understand the valid concerns that exist around child trafficking (which is a real problem), TSA screeners lack the training (and in many cases the intelligence) to actually identify trafficking victims and instead simply resort to “your skin isn’t the same color so maybe something isn’t right.”
The secret service, like every agency engaged with security theatre, uses each of their failures to argue for more authority. Classic.
@Frank What on earth are you talking about? I live west on 66 and still prefer a lot of the time to drive in to DCA. It’s just a much better experience overall than IAD
The orientation of the main runway at DCA supports taking off and landing over the river, not over Virginia. You can easily see it on Google Maps.
Frank: that’s among the more nonsensical posts I’ve seen on here. Literally everything about DCA is superior to IAD.
@Gary – would be a shame to lose the River Visual approach. But that article seems to only talk about changes to departures not approaches.
So why is everyone here calling Reagan National Airport “DCA”?
@pakmiller
For the same reason why we call Dulles IAD and Marshall BWI. Next question?