News and notes from around the interweb:
- First Look – New American Airlines Admirals Club Houston, TX (IAH) Terminal A
- The
boy who cried wolfUS Department of State says you’re not safe if you leave the house (though people remain statistically more likely to drown in a bucket).Extremists continue to focus on tourist locations, transportation hubs, markets/shopping malls, and local government facilities as viable targets. In addition, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, parks, high-profile events, educational institutions, airports, and other soft targets remain priority locations for possible attacks. U.S. citizens should exercise additional vigilance in these and similar locations, in particular during the upcoming summer travel season when large crowds may be common.
- United’s settlement with Dr. Dao takes the City of Chicago off the hook even though it was Aviation Police who actually dragged him from the plane and bloodied him.
- Etihad now sells access to its first class lounge in Abu Dhabi
- Leaked United Airlines Airbus A350 configuration
- Through May 31 American Express Membership Rewards is offering a 25% transfer bonus to jetBlue TrueBlue
- Southwest Airlines eliminated overbooking because the flights where people don’t show up have low load factors anyway, where overbooking could help them customers pretty much always show up and there aren’t re-accommodation options, and Southwest isn’t as good as other airlines at handling denied boarding situations anyway.
So while overbooking has long been an important tool for airlines to manage that passengers change their plans, it happens not to align itself well with Southwest’s needs. What’s more, “in the last 5 years alone, he says the revenue benefit from overbooking at Southwest has been cut in half.”
Like Cranky Flier I’m a bit skeptical of the decision, but Southwest says it’s driven by data for their unique circumstances.
That seems sketchy that United’s settlement prevents him from filing a suit against the police. Not really comfortable with the idea of corporations covering up abuse by police officers. They broke his nose and knocked his teeth out. These were not United employees they were the police (agents of the government) and it feels really wrong that this was included in any settlement where the city was not a party.
US Department of State should be more concerned about what happens when you return home.
Seems you are more likely to be harassed upon returning to the USA than to be caught in a foreign terror attack, especially if you happen to have a common Muslim name.
Shame. The police officers involved should be held accountable as well.
United and Chicago may very well have struck a deal between themselves to deal with whatever settlement was reached.
The purpose of settling with Dr. Dao is obviously to get this catastrophe behind them and out of the news. A suit involving the law enforcement personnel would completely defeat that purpose. United’s name would be disgraced again throughout any trial. No kind of court proceeding of any type is in United’s interest. They had to buy off Dr. Dao completely or not at all.
The Aviation Dept probably blackmailed United that if United doesnt cover for the cops, cops are not going to respond to calls from United. If cops are slow to respond to legitimate calls more United flights would get delayed hitting them on the bottomline