News and notes from around the interweb:
- She can’t redeem her Membership Rewards points, either. American Express is suing Tori Spelling for a $38,000 unpaid credit card bill. She’s also unlikely to be able to get credit card signup bonuses at this point, too.
- Saturday night’s Turkish Airlines Houston – Istanbul flight was diverted to Shannon, Ireland because of a bomb threat. Apparently the decision was made to divert upon finding a note onboard that was interpreted as threatening, details of the note weren’t immediately available. But it turned out to be a hoax.
- British Airways is testing ‘automatic check-in’ 6 hours prior to departure. “Your boarding pass will be generated and sent to you to by email – whether you like it or not.”
- About 1% of foreign visitors overstay their US visas
- Can India please lift the restriction that bans inflight internet over their airspace? Planes with internet have to turn it off when they cross over India. It’s a rule that Air India actually learned about from a service provider while shopping to equip their planes with internet.
- Frequent flyer programs for kids
Gary, any insight as to why BA might be doing this? I always thought that airlines wanted people to have to hit the kiosk/counter at the airport so that they could get an accurate count of who is actually on the premises at T-1h, T-30m, etc. If I recall correctly, some domestic US carriers actually use this information to give away seats (as in, if you haven’t checked in within X minutes of the flight, they’re giving your seat away.) Why would any carrier want everyone to be “checked in” automatically?
If you are checked in automatically then you would be able to hop onto the flight 45-60 minutes before departure time. These would ALL be confirmed seats an can not be reassigned until after the gate closes. Can you see a gate agent having to wait until that time to check in standbys and walkups
I know this is an old blog post but if BA automatically checks you in before you get to the airport when you have connecting flights to other OW carriers they can’t obtain your boarding passes for the connecting flights from the agents at the airport. I’ve experienced this recently and it’s a real problem if you can’t print the other boarding passes and need to do a connection at LHR (purple signs).