Tag Archives for atlanta.
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.
Jameel Reid flew from Los Angeles to Atlanta and waited for his luggage at baggage claim. Atlanta residents aren’t used to waiting half an hour for bags – Delta offers a 20 minute guarantee – so after 30 minutes he pulled out this phone and tracked the location of the missing bag which he’d left an Apple Airtag in. The bag was already outside the airport.
Two days later he saw his bag’s airtag location returned to the airport, so he went back himself and contacted airport police.
The illegally-parked Porsche – intruding on a handicap space – left the woman ‘alone in the dark’ and unable to get into her vehicle to leave. Parking staff told the woman to call the police. Police told her to deal with parking staff. This went on for hours.
Two comedians are suing over being searched for drugs at the Atlanta airport while boarding their flights. The stops and searches lack probably cause, and are generally based on racial profiling (duh). Over a 9 month period, police stopped 402 passengers at the jet bridge in Atlanta. 68% of those were minorities. Fewer than 1% – just 3 – yielded ‘drug seizures’ like THC gummies and six prescription pills.
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 »
