In July 1942, Hitler continued to gain ground against the Soviet Union. The United States was only seven months into its participation in World War II. The Manhattan Project had not yet even begun. And a 16 year old New Yorker named Azriel “Al” Blackman took a job as a mechanic for American Export Airlines.…
Everything in this world changes. As time goes by, we discover that more and more business interactions are being automated. This is simply the way things are going. Talking to a human being is now a perk, a frill. In fact, to many people, it is a customer service failure if automation prevents them from…
Earlier this week, Melinda Deaton and her family filed a complaint claiming that TSA agents had strip-searched her, mocked her feeding tube, and physically handled, it, putting her at risk for infection as she traveled from Dallas to a Minnesota medical appointment. Nothing to worry about though. The TSA has already completed its thorough investigation…
Life With Dogs reports that disabled veteran Jim Stanek was called ‘retarded’ and his service dog kicked during a 48 hour ordeal when they were stranded in Dulles airport. Staneck and his service dog Sarge spent 48 hours stranded in the Dulles Airport after numerous flight cancellations and delays. Wounded in battle, Staneck suffers from…
Clive Irving is an expert on Boeing. He wrote a 1993 book on the history of the 747. The 737 is the bestselling commercial airliner. Nearly 10,000 have been produced over 40 years. Irving says there are serious issues with the fuselage design of the 737. Specifically, he says that the skin is too thin.…
Fare mistakes are very dangerous. At least once every few months, some airline makes a typo, and sells tickets at a price no rational person could think was correct. Yet they jump on it, post it to forums and blogs before the airline can fix it. In January, the DOT prohibited airlines from increasing the…
A United Airlines flight was scheduled to leave Shanghai on Wednesday, but its passengers ended up stranded till Saturday. Maintenance problems ground airplanes all the time. To be realistic, what is the alternative? Would any passenger rather fly on an unsafe plane? But it took that many days for replacement parts to arrive, which is…
Airline food has a deservedly bad reputation, though as meals are decreasingly available, some travelers may be pining for the old lump of mystery meat in bland sauce. Passengers on Delta flights out of Amsterdam are to be forgiven for wishing that Delta had eliminated meal service prior to their flights. Two passengers, on…
The Transportation Security Administration exists. The TSA has a blog at blog.tsa.gov. The stated purpose of the blog is to “facilitate an ongoing dialogue on innovations in security, technology and the checkpoint screening process.” The demonstrated purpose of said blog is for the TSA to congratulate itself on its detection of contraband, and belittle or…
Ikea has set up shop in several interesting places over the years. Â It was only a few years ago that Ikea set up shop at Washington’s Union Station to make its bid to redecorate the Oval Office. Now, Ikea is at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle Airport(CDG). In Terminal 3, you can tour nine bedrooms, a…
One of the side effects of increased checked bag charges is that more people are trying to cram all of their items into their carry-ons. Spirit Air tried to address this by charging for carry-on bags, but we like a new program by Wizz Air. Passengers who try to sneak bags past onto the plane…
In the airline industry, the passenger name record(PNR), is a single record in a computer reservation system that contains a single reservation for one or more passengers. The problem is that PNRs have no memory. They represent one trip. They do not represent the passenger’s relationship with the airline. For that, in the 80s, airlines…
From the Editor When I first started with Flight Wisdom, we had a very different conception of what it would be. At the end of this month, we celebrate our six year anniversary. The first post was dated July 29, 2006. We started out wanting to do an information site with a blog attached, which…
On Friday, June 29th, the TSA issued another of their blog posts, entitled Travelling with Crematory Remains. It seemed like an innocuous, yet random blog post. But it was yet another example of the TSA sidestepping controversy and not addressing their critics unless there is an opportunity to belittle those critics. On June 19th, John…
We’ve been contemplating this for a few days now. It is hard to go through TSA stories. Our opinion on the matter has been expressed before. Last week, the Associated Press reported that 88-year old Henry Kissenger, former Secretary of State, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and man who wears a brace and thus cannot remove…
Every week, Bob Burns of the TSA Blog Team posts the TSA’s Week in Review and we cringe. Bob’s method of recounting these stories isn’t the narrative of stopping terrorists. In the majority of these cases, the truth is they haven’t found anyone malicious, they’ve found a foolish person. “A passenger at John Wayne Airport…
Last week, we reported on how Spirit Airlines would not even refund the money of a dying veteran. After a week of criticism, Ben Baldanza, CEO of Spirit Airlines, issued a press release. He didn’t apologize for the company’s policy so much as apologize for failing to explain why being rigid and inflexible allows them…
Jerry Meekins is on a mission to change the No Refund Policy of Spirit Airlines. Meekins recently purchased a ticket on Spirit, and subsequently was diagnosed with Terminal Cancer. It was his expectation, that under the circumstances, Spirit might make an exception of return his money. Spirit responded that it wouldn’t be fair to bend…
The last vestige of the Cookie, Midwest Airlines, is dying. Bad enough that Frontier Airlines, which swallowed Midwest, is slowly eliminating their routes, their hubs in Milwaukee and Kansas City, but now the most unique thing about Midwest…the symbol of care…a cookie baked fresh in the back of the plane, dies May 1st. “The company…
Blogger Bob Burns of the TSA reports that an unnamed intrepid agent successfully utilized the TSA’s enhanced pat down procedure to discover between 1000 and 2000 Ecstasy pills that had been secreted in the traveler’s underwear. The explosive discovery was made at LAX. No doubt, the discovery of a hidden, illegal, but not dangerous object,…
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="People Express Airlines (1986) (Photo credit: Hunter-Desportes)"][/caption] PEOPLExpress is back…well, the name is, at least. The new PEOPLExpress is a low-cost carrier with a mission statement to serve markets currently underserved by major carriers. Despite the fact it has not even filed with the DOT to become a scheduled airline, they…
On Friday, Malev ceased operation. Late that night and into Saturday morning, fourteen Boeing 737 aircraft, leased from the International Lease Finance Corporation, were flown to Shannon, Ireland. Malev operated eighteen 737s, seventeen of which were leased from ILFC. The first of the aircraft to leave Budapest flew a solemn lap around the airport and…
Last week, Spanair ceased operations after 25 years. The airline had been looking for a takeover partner to ensure operations, but was unable to do so and the government withdrew the funding support it had been giving the airline. Today, after 65 years, state-owned Malev Hungarian Airlines ceased operations as the government withdrew financing. The…
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="LaGuardia Airport - Queens, New York (Photo credit: Dougtone)"][/caption] When they knocked down the former National Airlines terminal at New York’s Kennedy Airport, we bemoaned the fact nothing could be done to save part of this unique structure. When they knocked down the back of the old TWA terminal, and fortunately…
We were disturbed by reports today that two British travelers were questioned, detained, and deported by the Department of Homeland Security, allegedly because of two tweets. Leigh Van Bryan and Emily Bunting say they were questioned for hours, detained, placed in a cell with violent criminals who stole their food, and finally sent back to…