Tag Archives for united states.
Starting Sunday, airline agents will have to choose “M” or “F” for every passenger entering the U.S. — even when the traveler’s passport lists “X.” The government is rejecting the very gender markers it issued, leaving airlines to guess who passengers are in order to satisfy new federal rules.
The U.S. is doubling the cost for visitors from close allies and security partners to come to the country. The price of an “ESTA” or Electronic System for Travel Authorization which passengers entering the United States on a visa waiver is going from $21 to $40.
The man was held and interrogated for 8 hours. He was valid for his status with no criminal history, though immigration officers can deny entry for any reason or not reason
A Russian passenger flew from Copenhagen to Los Angeles on Scandinavian flight 931 last month despite not having a ticket, passport, or visa. He’s being called a stowaway, but he wasn’t hiding. He simply sat down in a seat.
The U.S. is “advising…increased caution” for U.S. citizens while overseas. The State Department is a bureaucracy, and how would it look if bad things happened and they didn’t warn people? Now that they’ve done so, bad things aren’t their fault.
The State Department advises that you register your travel with them and… follow them on Facebook and Twitter. That’s hardly advice that, for now, is going to scare me off from travel.
At least 16 students were deported from the Atlanta airport in one day after arriving from Delhi on a Delta flight. They all had valid F1 visas to study at St. Louis University.
The U.S. is losing millions of visitors due to absurd wait times for visas. Last year we saw them get 14 times longer than they were before the pandemic, in some cases nearly three years. Make make it difficult for talented people to come here for work, too, and after a short time we… kick them out.
And we don’t do a great job even figuring out who ‘we’ ‘want’ here in the first place.
Days after the CDC updated its Covid-19 vaccination requirement for visitors traveling to the U.S. by air, the Biden administration announced that its vaccine requirements – including for airline passengers – will end at the ‘end of the day’ on May 11.
Foreign visits to the U.S. are down substantially compared to pre-pandemic times. That’s bad for airlines. It’s bad for hotels. But it’s bad for the entire U.S. economy, too. And it’s an own-goal, with the U.S. government slow-walking people who want to visit here from around the world.
Some progress may be on the way making it faster to submit passport renewals – moving those to an optional online system, which saves time in the mail and also should save time waiting for data to be entered upon receipt.
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 »
