Given the sheer number of flights that have been canceled today — and stand to be canceled and delayed in the coming hours — it’s possible you’re reading this from the discomfort of an airport or in the house of that family member you’d hoped to be saying goodbye to for another year. [More]
air travel
JetBlue Employee Saved Our Family Vacation After We Booked Tickets For The Wrong Month
By 12.21.12
Back in September, the K. family were planning their end-of-year getaway from New York to Florida. But only days before they were set to travel to warmer climes, the Ks realized they had made a huge goof that could cost them a lot of money. [More]
Remember That The Gift You Packed Might Not Make It Through Airport Security With The Wrapping Intact
By 12.18.12
With Christmas a week away, we figured it was time to remind everyone who plans on traveling with gifts in their bags that the TSA might have to undo your handiwork at the airport. [More]
Is American Airlines Misleading Passengers Into Paying Extra For Seats?
By 12.18.12
If you go online to choose your seat for a flight you’ve already booked only to find that all the remaining seats are premium offerings that require an extra fee, you might think, “Ugh, I should have checked in earlier so I wouldn’t have to pay.” But if you’re flying American Airlines, it might actually be worth it to wait until shortly before your flight. [More]
Southwest Raising Bag Fees, Will Start Charging For No-Shows
By 12.14.12
Hours after announcing a $29 million settlement over its drink voucher program, Southwest Airlines revealed plans to add $300 million in new and increased fees, along with a policy change that will certainly irk some frequent Southwest travelers. [More]
Southwest Owes Passengers $29 Million In Free Drinks
By 12.14.12 — Updated: 1.21.13
August 1, 2010 is a day that many Southwest Airlines Business Select fliers know well. It’s the day on which the carrier stopped allowing these passengers to carry over their unused free drink vouchers to future flights. More than two years and one class-action settlement later, Southwest is having to buy a lot of rounds. [More]
FCC Asks FAA To Lighten Up About In-Air Wireless Device Restrictions
By 12.10.12
With pilots approved to use iPads as flight manuals in their cockpits, and the FAA’s own studies finding “no evidence saying [wireless] devices can’t interfere with a plane, and… no evidence saying that they can,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has asked the FAA to ease up on restrictions against wireless device use on planes. [More]
Report: Only 1-In-6 TSA Pat-Downs Done Properly At Newark Airport
By 12.10.12
Pat-downs at airport security checkpoints are meant as alternatives to the controversial full-body scans that are becoming the standard at major air hubs. But a recently uncovered report casts some doubt on whether or not Transportation Security Administration screeners actually know or care about what they are doing when it comes to patting a traveler down. [More]
Flight Attendant: If It Exists, Passengers Have Asked Me For It
By 12.3.12
When flying, the flight attendant can provide you with food, drink, blankets, information, and maybe a pen to fill in that customs declaration form. But there are certain things the attendant simply can’t help you with. [More]
‘Passenger Of Size’ Policies For The Largest Domestic Airlines
By 11.8.12 — Updated: 11.17.12
For passengers who don’t easily fit into the narrow seats on most commercial jets, it helps to know in advance what each carrier’s policies. [More]
Orbitz Insists The Flight I Took Was Actually Canceled, Withholds $133
By 11.2.12
You know those paranoid sci-fi stories where everything the protagonist thought he knew about reality starts to come apart at the seams and he has to question whether he really is married to Sharon Stone or maybe he’s really trapped on an island with that Hobbit guy? Well, that’s what Orbitz is doing to Devin (well, maybe not the Sharon Stone part). [More]
TSA Taking Controversial X-Ray Scanners Out Of Big Airports And Shipping Them Off To Smaller Ones
By 10.19.12
According to reports, the TSA is removing backscatter full-body scanners, which use very small amounts of ionizing radiation, from major airports and replacing them with less-controversial millimeter wave scanners. But those X-ray scanners aren’t going to the Museum of Bad Ideas; they’re being shipped off for use at smaller airports. [More]
Delta Learns That It’s Not A Good PR Move To Upset Judy Blume
By 10.16.12
Judy Blume is a world-famous author of books for kids and young adults (I still remember the eye-opening experience of thumbing through my older sister’s dogeared copy of Tiger Eyes), but in the parlance of Us Weekly, she’s just like us! Except she has 75,000 Twitter followers to gripe to about her problems with Delta. [More]
Dying Woman Says TSA Humiliated Her By Refusing To Perform Search In Private
By 10.10.12
A woman dying from leukemia is mortified, claiming that TSA screeners at Sea-Tac airport in Washington state made her lift up her shirt and checked under her bandages in front of other travelers. [More]
American Airlines Employees Say All These Flight Delays Are Turning Passengers Violent
By 10.9.12
American Airlines has had better days. Delays and canceled flights have soared in recent months; the airline says it’s disgruntled pilots while the pilots says it’s crappy old jets that need constant repair. Regardless of who is to blame, the AA employees working at airport gates say that stranded passengers are channeling their anger into violence at the nearest person in an American uniform. [More]
Passenger Says She Was Kicked Off Plane For Being Blind; Airline Says She Seemed Drunk
By 10.4.12
It’s a game of She Says/Airline Says in the case of a Missouri woman who was recently removed from an Allegiant airlines flight. The passenger claims that Allegiant staff treated her poorly because of her blindness, while the airline contends that flight attendants were merely dealing with a disruptive passenger who appeared to be intoxicated. [More]
Masking Tape, Failing Altimeters & Vanishing Employees: One Man’s Tale Of Flying On American Airlines
By 10.1.12
Maybe we’re piling on poor, beleaguered American Airlines of late, but the carrier sure has been in the news a lot these days, and not for good things. Now a recent opinion piece in the New York Times only bolsters these stories of delayed and/or canceled flights, ticked-off pilots and battered and bruised jets. [More]
American Airlines Flight Makes Emergency Landing Because Seats Are Not Supposed To Come Unbolted Mid-Flight
By 10.1.12
One of the claims made by American Airlines pilots in their ongoing dispute with the carrier is that its fleet of planes are old and in need of constant maintenance. Case in point: A flight en route from Boston to Miami on Saturday had to make an emergency landing at JFK Airport in New York after a row of passenger seats became unbolted shortly after take-off. [More]
