Tag Archives for atlanta.
If you’re a wanted man, it’s a good idea to avoid airports. There are more law enforcement on property – from myriad agencies – than just about anywhere else. There may be police, FBI, DEA, CBP, and virtually every other three-letter agency you can come up with. There are cameras everywhere. And you have to show I.D.
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.
Delta Air Lines flight 2097 from Atlanta to Rochester was delayed an hour and one of the airline’s passengers wouldn’t have it. She melted down at gate B14, demanding to speak to a manager – while “calling employees names [and calling a] fellow traveler a weasel.” Delta’s gate agents remained calm throughout.
The traditional hub-and-spoke model, once dictated by local traffic generating high fares, is being redefined by cities like Charlotte and Atlanta, which have become central nodes for connecting flights. Despite their non-central geographic locations, these hubs thrive by leveraging strategic north-south connections, outperforming traditional expectations and contributing to the evolving dynamics of airline profitability.
At Baltimore Washington International airport a man who claimed to have a bomb in his vehicle was arrested. There were also multiple stabbings at the Atlanta airport this afternoon. One of the three victims was a police officer.
They got onto a single operating certificate. They merged US Airways Dividend Miles into American AAdvantage (while following US Airways plans for a revenue-based program). They combined pilot and flight attendant seniority lists, and transitioned to a single maintenance platform.
But that’s not all of the work that had to happen. Going into 2023, a decade later, it still wasn’t done. American Airlines and US Airways had separate airport operations, and different gates, in 140 locations. Atlanta was the final station to consolidate gates and that’s just happened.
Monday night’s Spirit Airlines flight 3902 from Atlanta to Detroit was delayed five hours. After a significant mechanical delay, passengers “were eventually told they could board around 10:15 p.m.” and around 15 did indeed board.
However “rowdy travelers caused another delay” and Spirit gate agents shut the boarding doors so that “nobody else could board.”
A Spirit Airlines gate agent was assaulted by a passenger they’d just denied boarding to out of a belief that the customer was intoxicated. The story is just coming out, though it occurred May 11 around 9:40 p.m. The passenger tried to force her way onto the jet bridge, and punched the gate agent in the face when that didn’t work.
The airport is spending $1.4 billion to reduce the number of gates at the airport.
If you wanted to open a business like a restaurant in the Atlanta airport you needed to pay the ex-Mayor’s daughter first. The airport’s former manager was fired for being insufficiently corrupt, and then the city council buried the payments that bought his silence.
Getting kickbacks from vendors avoids problems with violating FAA rules on use of funds, but does sometimes attract attention of the FBI. Some employees just commit expense fraud.
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 »
