November 28, 2018: In an effort to compete with hotel loyalty programs, online travel sites, like Expedia, are enhancing their booking sites with their own rewards programs. Some offer add on deals — incremental revenue opportunities for them — with some only available for 15 minutes after you make a firm travel booking. Some booking sites even offer as much as 10% cash back on your booking. Be sure and read the fine print on all these “so called deals.”
November 27, 2018: WOW — and they’re considering a rider loyalty program — hopefully not adding more confusion to their ride booking process? Lyft already has a program and tie in with Delta and JetBlue for even more confusion and so called loyalty rewards.
November 26, 2018: Could be — several carriers are reviewing proposals to monitor passenger “health data” with high tech devices placed in their inflight bathrooms — and selling the data to medical research groups… hopefully the FAA will keep this idea from flying?
November 16, 2018: Maybe — check out the new Costco holiday shopping catalogue and you’ll find a small ad for something called, “Costco Wheels Up Private Aviation” membership — price is $15,999.99! Very confusing — involves a Costco cash card and flight credit — not sure what it is they’re selling? Hopefully includes grooming standards for flights as well as adequate parking.
November 14, 2018: The new technology will provide TSA the capability to screen multiple airport passengers from up to 25 feet away. The idea is too speed up the security line process, long lines and frustration due to the growing demand for travel and larger planes. Lets hope the “potentially” new system doesn’t add more frustration to both travelers and TSA!!!
November 13, 2018: Virgin Voyages announced recently that their first cruise ship, Scarlet Lady, will include an onboard tattoo parlor called “Squid Ink.” The cruising tat lounge will feature vegan ink and body piercings — for those health enthusiasts — lets hope the ships captain holds a steady course.
November 9, 2018: A JAL co-pilot was arrested by British Police at Heathrow Airport before departure of his flight to Tokyo — seems he was found to have more than TEN TIMES (10x) the legal limit of alcohol — a tram bus driver noticed the boozy smell when he was driving the flight crew to board to plane. That’s really over doing “just one more” drink before hitting the road — or runway!!!
November 8, 2018: An American Airlines baggage handler, loading bags into a 737 jet leaving Kansas City, took a boozy break and nap inside the jets cargo hold — when he woke up he was in Chicago. Good thing the jets cargo hold area is heated and pressurized or the landing outcome might have been different! Wonder how often that happens?
November 7, 2018: Delta is going to add an exterior bathroom window into their new Airbus jets — not sure why — maybe to make even smaller inflight bathrooms look smaller? No peeking please!
October 31, 2018: Yup — the airline plans to launch what it calls the nations first “biometric terminal” at their Atlanta hub and use facial recognition in their international terminal at security, check in, boarding and customs. Right now the Delta program is in the “test” stage as it has a tendency to make mistakes and deny boarding or mistake ids with those on TSA’s no fly list — sounds like they need some fine tuning?
