News and notes from around the interweb:
- United is renovating its lounges with “improved wi-fi, more power outlets and more comfortable seating” — even redoing the incomparable B18 lounge at O’Hare. Here’s the renovation schedule.
- Unions representing SkyChefs and Gate Gourmet workers want a federal 50 cent per ticket tax to supplement their wages. I’m surprised there’s as much catering spend still:
Airlines spent $3.62 per passenger on food in 2013, according to federal statistics, down from $4.79 in 2001.
- Lufthansa’s Munich flights now all have their new first class.
- If this doesn’t scare you off of Global Entry, nothing will! (If you have any outstanding warrants, that is..)
- SAS sells a London Heathrow slot pair to Turkish
Should there be an airline tax to pay catering workers? No. Should they have the ability to strike? Definitely yes. Airlines can’t have it both ways, having workers not able to strike because they are descended from airline workers, but not able to plead their case because they are not airline workers…
I wish Lufthansa would get wifi on all their a380 planes, I cant believe they still dont 🙁
@joelfreak agree 100%, they can strike though there are just processes to go through that most workers don’t have to (and that these workers dhouldn’t have to)
50 cents or a nickel (as the article says)?
They should be going after their employer (Sky Chefs or whatever), not a surcharge.
$3.62 per person. That half Coke and bag of pretzels most people have can’t even cost a dollar. If anything it would seem it would be a first/business class surcharge.
Gotta love the photo of the Lufthansa First Class experience is actually of the “special” B744 upper deck First Class, which will soon be a memory! Ooops!
Both Unite Here and SEIU bosses don’t care what consumers pay for a meal. Unite Here probably has more hotels on its do not patronize list, then actual hotels with a union workforce. Neither union is noted for an apprenticeship program or a hiring hall.
The local airport, Lambert, is control by the City of St. Louis. When a private company enter into a contract with the city to provide services at the airport, it must pay the current livable wage rate with benefits or a higher hourly wage. Like the feds, there is an active push by the city to qualify firms as MWBE and steer contracts toward those businesses.
Now I have no idea on what a restaurant or a bookstore pays in rent to the City of St. Louis. However, a few years ago, it became known the guy running the shoe shine business at the airport was given a new contract that left nothing in profit.