News and notes from around the interweb:
- How to prepare for longer TSA lines this summer, several of the suggestions are mine.
- 70,000 American Airlines passengers and 40,000 bags missed flights this year thanks to TSA security backups. The problem isn’t money however, at over $7 billion a year for TSA nor is it staff — they have 50,000… Screening and regulating aviation security need to be split up, one agency doing it leads to bad results and no accountability.
- An agreement is now in place to put the disastrous Baha Mar Bahamas project back on track. Many guests got hosed. Chinese financing required use of specific Chinese contractors, this Bahamas project was also a Chinese jobs project as well. And the requirements apparently exploded the cost and timing, driving the developer into bankruptcy. The investors and Bahamian government have been trying to get it restarted since the fall, with the developer angling not to lose their entire investment.
- ANA Mileage Club’s award routing rules
- This is TSA PreCheck in Philadelphia’s A terminal on Wednesday afternoon. Clearly the problem isn’t that there aren’t enough people eligible for PreCheck as TSA sometimes claims.
- And this is the line at the bar of American’s Admirals Club in that terminal. I don’t think a price increase is warranted for membership. (The two people working the bar got into a fight while I was there as well, and I had to get up from my bar stool to stand in line in order to be helped.)
I’ve been in TSA pre-check lines in Atlanta that were longer than the Sky Priority lines, and the people in Sky Priority got through faster (my traveling companions were Sky Priority). And here’s something to watch out for: when I returned from Europe to ATL on Thursday, there was a 10 minute backup in the Global Entry line (after the kiosk, but before the luggage). Not good!
@Gary – Is a line of that magnitude at the bar normal? If so, a cunning plan might be to put a second bartender on the busier shifts.
the regular line at DCA went faster than the Pre line because it was being VIDEOTAPED. The AA Club was standing room only on Thursday night, but I think that must be expected as road warriors are all traveling home that day.
@Christian I don’t usually visit that club. There were two bartenders at the bar. However they got into a fight and only one was helping customers, the other was doing ‘important stuff’.
AA has been shifting flights around among the terminals at PHL a TON in the last 6-8 months. I have flown out of Terminal A more in the last 6 months than I have in the prior 5 years combined. The clubs in A – especially the one in A East which is the legacy AA one – are really undersized for the amount of traffic they now see, both in square footage and staffing levels.
@ Gary — The barkeeps at A-west must have tenure or something. I’ve never had such poor service in an club lounge in my life, and for the record I’m usually a supporter of all things ‘Gray Panther’.
-JRL
We were in that lounge last week. Bartender made three people form a line (inside the velvet rope) so she could remember who was next. Your line looks absurd.
PHL-ATH was delayed and there was no available estimate of a new departure time. Agents said they would make an announcement. Out of the blue, an announcement came over the PA that the flight was now boarding and ‘the doors are closing.’ Everybody sprinted to the gate only to find out that boarding had just begun.
Strange lounge experience, to be sure.
Where can I find information on the airports where Platinum card holders get access to faster security lines? How do you identify these lines?
I regularly fly out of PHL and as soon as I read the post’s headline, I knew it was going to be about the club in Terminal A. If you want drinks served in a timely manner, you have to schlep it over to the club in terminals B/C.
Likewise, security is always a nightmare in A-east. I always enter through another terminal and schlep it to my gate.
tl;dr PHL terminal A sucks
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