Spirit Airlines is known for pushing its bottom-scraping fees with crass emailed promos, but usually they just stick with dorky sex puns. Now they’re branching out into sociopolitical commentary with their latest “Check Out The Oil On Our Beaches” promotion that leverages the BP oil spill in comedy and marketing gold. [More]
travel
Does Delta Have The Rudest Flight Attendants?
By 6.22.10
Airfarewatchdog polled its readers and found that “by a large margin” Delta has the rudest flight attendants, followed by United. Southwest, on the other hand, was the nicest. [More]
Luggage Emerges From United Airlines Flight Totally Mauled
By 6.22.10
A Gothamist reader’s bags didn’t show up until three days after she got off the United Airlines flight, and when they did, they looked like they’d been ravaged by the gnashing of an angry monster. The bags and contents were torn, soaked, and moldy, and several items were missing. [More]
Continental Airlines Forgets That Planes Need Pilots
By 6.21.10
We’re not sure what is going on with Continental Airlines lately but people are writing in to let us know that something foul is afoot. The latest indignity also involves the Manchester, NH airport. Apparently, a reader who was unable to get to Cleveland on time was told that the airline simply forgot to schedule a pilot for his flight. [More]
Rent Enterprise Car At Twice The Rate, Get Free Dentures (Check Under Floormat)
By 6.21.10
Timothy rented a car from Enterprise last month when he flew into Newark Airport in New Jersey, and he was forced to pay almost twice the amount quoted in his reservation because of problems with a coupon code and an uncooperative manager. But there’s good news: the rental came with a special, stinky surprise that he and his wife didn’t find until the second day of the rental. (Warning: there’s a big close-up photo below.) [More]
Continental Takes Three Days And Counting To Fly Passenger From Texas to New Hampshire
By 6.20.10
Poor Ashley, all she wanted was to fly from Houston to Manchester to visit her friend for the weekend. She planned to leave on Thursday, but Continental apparently overbooked a whole mess of flights and could only get her to Detroit the next day. From there Continental planned to send her onto Manchester with Delta, but that didn’t work out either. After spending a night stuck in Detroit, Ashley made it to Atlanta, where Delta figured she would manage to catch one of their many flights to New England. Nope! Instead, things got much, much worse. [More]
Is The Dominican Republic An International Destination? Airlines Disagree
By 6.19.10
American Airlines told Bill that he couldn’t acces their international lounge because his flight from the Dominican Republic to Houston, which required a passport and a customs form, didn’t count as an international flight. Bill’s wife had paid $300 to upgrade Bill’s ticket to first class expressly so he could access the lounge, and Bill wasn’t sure what part of “international” American didn’t seem to understand. Yet it turns out American might be right. [More]
Spirit Airlines Flights Resume Friday, Offers Everyone $50 Off
By 6.16.10
Spirit Airline flights, grounded since the beginning of a 5-day pilot strike, could will resume Friday, after the pilots union and the airline reached a tentative agreement following 26 straight hours of negotiation. In its typically tongue-in-cheek fashion, coinciding with the announcement was a “Strikingly Low Fares” promotion offering everyone $50 off new tickets plus 5,000 bonus miles. [More]
Delta Plays Airport Roulette When Flying Into D.C.
By 6.15.10
On Sunday, Andy emailed us from his seat on Delta Flight 2744 from Minneapolis to Washington, D.C., to let us know that he had no idea where his flight was going to land. The ticket he purchased said he was flying to Ronald Reagan National Airport, but Delta said it would all depend on whether they could beat their scheduled 10:19 arrival time and get there before the ten o’clock airport curfew–otherwise they’d have to land at Dulles. Strangely, they didn’t mention this 10 p.m. curfew to Andy before he bought the ticket. [More]
Jet Blue COO: Flying From NYC To Boston Is Stupid
By 6.15.10
It’s not often you hear an airline exec recommend alternatives to flying, but Jet Blue Chief Operating Officer Rob Maruster decided to wing it yesterday and told attendees at an air-travel conference: “I may be shooting ourselves in the foot here, with five daily flights from JFK to Boston. But it just may not make that much sense for an airplane on a 150-mile route to fly over 300 air miles to get there. Maybe there’s a different mode of transportation that may be better to carry those customers from point A to point B.” Maybe we should be calling him former Jet Blue COO. [More]
Cruise Line Employee Used Reservation List To Determine When To Rob Vacationers
By 6.14.10
I guess you could try to prepare your robbery schedule based on Foursquare and Twitter updates, but a former Royal Caribbean Cruise Line employee found a much easier way: she accessed the cruise line’s reservations list, wrote down the addresses of passengers and the dates they’d be on the cruise, and handed the list off to her husband. She’s being charged with 24 counts of burglary, while her husband will be charged soon. [More]
Customers Remain Stranded As Spirit Cancels Wed Flights
By 6.14.10
The South Florida Sun Sentinel says that Spirit Airlines has canceled its Wednesday flights, which will be the 5th consecutive day that the airline has not flown due to a pilot strike. [More]
Spirit Airlines Grounded By Pilot Strike
By 6.13.10
If you’ve got a reservation for a flight on Spirit Airlines, you’d better start looking into other alternatives. The airline’s pilots have gone on strike after contract talks with management broke down yesterday morning. Apparently, the pilots were upset that they’d have to pay extra fees to carry baggage onto flights. Nah, just kidding. It’s just you getting stuck with those fees, not the cockpit crew. [More]
Delta Smashed My Bike And Won't Refund The Baggage Fee
By 6.9.10
This guy is trying to raise money to build dams in Africa by doing 20 half Ironman races. Consequently, he has to travel with his bike a lot. He says that during a recent trip back from Hawaii Delta smashed his bike and won’t even refund the $200 fee he paid them to transport it. This makes him sad. [More]
Airlines' Approval Ratings Rise
By 6.8.10
You love the airlines now! Or at least, you don’t hate them any worse than you did back in 2007, according to a new survey released by J.D. Power & Associates. [More]
Science Behind 'Lie To Me' May Be Questionable Even For TV Show Premise
By 6.7.10
Screening Passengers by Observation Technique or (SPOT) is a real, but apparently pseudo-scientific program run by the TSA that claims to train security personnel to detect tiny facial cues that will identify terrorists and other criminals as they pass through the airport. The trouble, it seems, is that the likelihood that all of this is a bunch of bs is rather high. [More]
Airlines May Be Forced To Treat You Like A Person
By 6.3.10
Earlier this week, we got word that the Department of Transportation was considering requiring airlines to offer more cash to passengers that get bumped from flights. Turns out those rumors were true, and were just one piece of a package of changes proposed by the DOT. If the new regulations go into effect, airlines would be required to play straight about baggage fees and fare prices, would have to allow no-penalty cancellations within 24 hours of ticket purchases, and would have to add new contingency plans for long tarmac delays. [More]
