Tag Archives for austin.
Southwest Airlines flight WN1392 from Dallas Love Field with 53 passengers and 5 crew on board landed in Austin Thursday night at 8:12 p.m. The plane struck and killed a man on runway 17R, despite seeing him there and – according to the airline – maneuvering to avoid him, though air traffic control audio doesn’t seem to support that explanation.
Airports across North America – 22 in the U.S. and one in Canada – will be bringing you JetStreamFest, the JetStream Music Festival, on Facebook Live beginning May 6 at 6 p.m. Eastern time. The event, hosted by my home town Austin airport which features live music throughout the year during normal times, will feature local musicians from each participating airport’s city. “Austin is the Live Music Capital of the World. Typically, we have 31 live performances across 7 stages in our terminal. Live music and supporting our local artists is who AUS is, even during the difficult times,” said Jacqueline Yaft, Chief Executive Officer of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. “Airports are known for bringing people together, and we want to continue doing so even when you can’t travel. Virtual music is a great way to…
It will be some time before we’re doing very much international travel. One reason is that immunity passports aren’t going to work.
However as some states begin to open their economies we’ll begin to see a little more travel again. Indeed we’re already beginning to.
The Austin airport was supposed to be getting a new lounge accessible by American Express Platinum cardmembers. The airport solicited bids to run a new independent lounge, and selected MAG (“Manchester Airport Group”) USA which runs Escape lounges. A rendering of the lounge even suggested it might be a dual Escape Lounge-Centurion lounge which is the setup in Phoenix. However the Austin City Council balked in a dispute over minority contracting rules.
Austin airport has been one of the fastest growing in the United States for several years. This past year they inaugurated 9 new gates. There’s now transatlantic scheduled service to London (Heathrow and Gatwick), Paris, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt.
Here are 7 surprising facts about my home airport.
The Austin airport has been working to add an independent lounge apart from the American, United, and Delta clubs that are already open there. They solicited a bid for the space back in the early spring, and the airport selected MAG (“Manchester Airport Group”) USA which runs Escape lounges. These are pay per use and accessible free to American Express Platinum cardmembers.
American Airlines announced this morning several new routes, the biggest of which are from my home airport in Austin. They also announced several one-off services to major events like the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting and Augusta National Masters Golf Tournament.
The Austin flights in particular are exciting because they’re a departure from American’s usual strategy. These are point-to-point flights that don’t touch hubs, instead they’re aggressively competing with new flights between Delta focus cities.
The Austin airport teased a new route announcement coming this morning. Routes Online broke the news ahead of their announcement – and it’s one I didn’t expect.
Austin has been one of the fastest growing airports in the country in recent years. This year they increased the number of available gates at the airport by 37%. While the amount of long haul international flying is limited, there’s London service from British Airways and Norwegian and Lufthansa started flying to Frankfurt back in May.
Delta has named Austin a focus city. While the largest airlines at Austin, in order, are Southwest, American, United and then Delta the addition of new gates will allow Delta to grow – and the gap between the three large U.S. legacy airlines isn’t that large to begin with.
My hometown airport, Austin-Bergstrom, is offering subsidies to airlines willing to start non-stop service to Hawaii, Amsterdam, Beijing, Dublin, Paris, Seoul, Shanghai, and Tokyo.
Not all of these routes are likely (or even plausible) but most are — for the right amount of cash.
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 »
