Tag Archives for pete buttigieg.
A new Senate Commerce Committee report alleges the Biden administration pushed major U.S. airports to house migrants inside terminals and other facilities, even after airport operators warned the move was unsafe, operationally unworkable, and likely illegal. Logan, O’Hare and JFK were among at least 11 airports contacted, with some ultimately sheltering hundreds of migrants overnight.
Elon Musk tweeted out his frustration, trying to get Starlink connectivity to disaster-affected areas. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg responds. And the two connect to solve the issue in real time.
After Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called Ed Bastian, ‘reminding him about his airline’s responsibilities to passengers’, the airline became more reasonable covering costs for stranded passengers. Delta had previously refused to pay for tickets that travelers were stuck buying on other airlines.
However, CEO Bastian has put Buttigieg on blast over this.
The Department of Transportation Inspector General’s office will be auditing Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s use of FAA aircraft. This is stupid, the Transportation Secretary often should fly private at times.
He won’t come out and say that. Instead Buttigieg maintains it was cheaper to fly private than to buy airline tickets. If that were true, his office is paying insufficient attention to the scourge of high ticket prices! (Hint: it is not actually true.)
Generally speaking airlines were already on the hook for lodging and meals during controllable delays, however they’ve made explicit commitments here that include reimbursement when they can’t provide a hotel and specific amounts for meals.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he was taking a connecting flight Friday evening and the airline (which he doesn’t name) cancelled his connection, so he insisted on refunding the segment. If things happened the way he describes, he stranded himself mid-trip in a city that wasn’t his destination, and he doesn’t ell us how he wound up making it the rest of the journey.
Along the way he offers commentary on the value of frequent flyer miles, which he estimates are worth ‘between 1 and 1.5 cents apiece’ (he’s right!) and settles on a value of 1.2 cents for the particular miles he was offered.
Buttigieg scolds the U.S. airlines but he could have done – and could still do – things that would help improve operational reliability. He’d rather jawbone though than do the hard work – even if it means feeling the consequences of cancellations himself.
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 »
