News and notes from around the interweb:
- Boston Logan airport is renovating terminal B. They’ll consolidate American and US Airways at contiguous gates, create a single security checkpoint out of three checkpoints (that’s almost never a good idea), and eventually move Southwest to the gates American vacates.
- Ashbabat, Turkmenistan has a $2.3 billion new airport.
The capital of Turkmenistan, a country largely closed to outsiders, has opened a $2.3 billion terminal at its international airport in the shape of a flying falcon.
The terminal, whose roof in profile resembles a bird with spread wings, adds to Ashgabat’s vast array of idiosyncratic buildings.
- You can use Hyatt’s app to ask the hotel to give you stuff
- How Brexit is changing US-London travel. We shouldn’t be too encouraged by the non-implosion of the British economy indeed that could even embolden pro-Brexit politicians hopes that the British lose interest in leaving the EU. The key here is uncertainty — about whether Brexit ultimately happens in real and not merely fig leaf terms, what that looks like, when it occurs — as much as anything else. Months in we don’t really have better answers than when the vote occurred.
- 25% bonus converting Hyatt points to American AAdvantage miles through October 14. I value my Hyatt points too much, I have too many American miles, and Hyatt points don’t convert at a particularly favorable rate to begin with so won’t be doing this. (HT: Loyalty Lobby)
- Dallas Morning News: Loyalty only goes so far as American Airlines, others revamp rewards programs
The mood among American frequent fliers is that the best thing about the airline was the AAdvantage program,” Leff said. “With what they’ve done, AAdvantage isn’t worse than other programs after all the changes and there are some arguments that it’s still incrementally better. But that distinguishing factor has substantially deteriorated.”
- Lance Oppenheim’s film about the LAX parking lot where airline employees live.
Taking a back-road shortcut to catch a flight from Los Angeles two years ago, I passed an obscure airline employee parking lot — and was surprised to see over 70 motor homes. It looked like there was an entire community planted right there in the parking lot of the airport. …
I learned that this community was an employee parking lot turned motor-home park made up of pilots, flight attendants and mechanics. … [A]s unconventional as their living situation may be, the residents of this airport parking lot told me their homes afford them something we all seek: freedom.
Regarding those motorhomes and campers in the LAX parking lot…
Years ago we had the same situation when I worked in aerospace. The sky high cost of housing in the Los Angles area forced many folks to buy homes as far away as Phoenix, Arizona and commute in plane pools and to buy motor homes and live M-F in modern California refuge camps while seeing their families living hundreds of miles away only on the weekends. We even had a television reporter drive with a carpool of workers who daily did an eight hour daily commute to work in Los Angeles. When there was an accident on one of the LA freeways, the record for the longest ride home from my plant was 12 hours. Glad to hear the refuge camp folk call their situation “freedom” as many might call it something else.
The Boston Logan terminal B consolidation is actually really good news (if I’m reading it correctly) in that it will “unstrand” gates B1-B3 (now used by Air Canada), which are currently isolated from the rest of the terminal; once you’re through security, there’s a small food vendor, restrooms–luckily–and that’s it. There’s also an advantage to PreCheck folks on non-shuttle ex-US mainline flights in that you no longer have to do a full tour of the concourse to get to your flight, since PreCheck is currently available at the security primarily serving the shuttle gates.
Massport is slowly working on the issue, as there were quite a few more “stranded gates” a decade ago, but we’re still left with stranded gates B37-38 (Virgin America) and C40-C42 (Alaska Airlines and occasionally JetBlue overflow).
While AAdvatange is not worse than Skymiles — a rather low bar — it is worse than MileagePlus with respect to top-tier elite upgrades, overall award availability, lifetime benefits and wider reach of the global airline alliance that UA was instrumental in founding…
The Brexit article is a little over the top. It doesn’t point out the price of oil effect on some the routes it mentions. It also talks about how the UK/USD exchange rate is so dramatic while in the same breath telling us how it’s 10% different. Like cutting a USA-Newcastle route is the end of civilization.