Delta Proposes National No-Fly List for Jerks
Delta Air Lines has proposed that U.S. airlines be permitted to share their no-fly lists for passengers who create disturbances on-board over their refusal to wear a mask. As it’s currently constructed, a passenger kicked off a Delta flight for refusing to wear a mask could conceivably walk across the airport and buy a ticket on another airline without incident – until he got zip-tied for not wearing a mask and being violent on that airline – but Delta’s proposal would put an end to that.
Delta now has more than 1,600 people on its mask-related no-fly lists and wants to share that list with other carriers to further protect employees across the industry. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, which represents 50,000 flight attendants, supports Delta’s proposal and has called for a centralized database of banned airline passengers in the past. Delta also proposes adding anyone to the no-fly list who willingly joins Spirit’s loyalty program or that lives in Florida.
The carrier would allow someone off the list if they paid a ransom of 1.2 million SkyMiles (roughly the cost of a one-way domestic redemption) and agreed to fly on the wing and not in the passenger cabin for a one-year probationary period once reinstated.
E-Gate Failure Clogs Heathrow Arrivals Hall
A failure of e-gates across the United Kingdom on Friday caused a backlog on arrival across the country, with the worst delays reported at London/Heathrow’s Terminal 5. Planes were collecting on the taxiway as Heathrow officials were not able to allow the passengers to deplane due to the overcrowded conditions in the arrivals hall as it looked to get things under control.
Some passengers were stuck on airplanes for up to two hours after arriving in London, and others reported waits in excess of two hours to pass through customs and immigration. Duty free operators at the airport had no comment when asked if they purposely sabotaged the e-gates to force people to pass the time in their stores.
Airport management at Heathrow and across the UK blamed the Border Force for the outage, while Border Force simply shrugged its shoulders and went back to working on the country’s red, amber, and green traffic light system for COVID-19 arrivals. The issue was resolved around 3:30 p.m. at which point the airport went back to its normal operation of long queues, lengthy walks to bus gates, and generally delayed flights.
AA Pilots Union Wants Ops Team Replaced
The American Airlines pilots union voted for the airline to remove its operations management team after the carrier suffered several operational issues earlier this summer. The leadership of the union voted 17-2 with one abstention for the airline to make the personnel changes.
The union’s leadership team also voted 18-2 for Coca-Cola to offer more Coke Zero in restaurants and for Southwest to bring back the honey roasted peanuts as a snack option, figuring as long as it was voting for one thing it had no power to enforce, it might as well vote for others.
As a final burn, the board also directed its president to ensure that new pilot hires are informed that the current scheduling uncertainties could affect their quality of life. While that may be true, that’s not anything new for a new hire at AA.
American keeps around 30% of its pilots on reserve, double the industry standard of 15%. The pilots union says this “is highly inefficient, and adds more hours of flying on the remaining pilots creating less scheduling flexibility causing record reassignments and pilot fatigue.”
- Aeromexico‘s pilots union prefers that the carrier maintain its partnership with Delta and its current majority Mexican ownership.
- Air Mauritius will receive a government bailout worth $281 million pending approval from its creditors and Ryanair.
- Cathay Pacific turns 75 today. Happy Birthday, Cathay!
- Citrus is the name of Russia’s S7 Airlines new low-cost carrier. It’s no Mango, but it’ll have to do.
- Cubana is indefinitely suspending its flight to Buenos Aires. Both its customers are disappointed.
- El Al sent a letter to the Israeli government demanding $100 million in compensation for what it described as damages caused by the government’s tough travel restrictions.
- GetJet Airlines signed an agreement to fly tour groups on behalf of TUI Baltics.
- KLM is resuming service to Las Vegas and Miami in December after realizing how many clubbing outfits it had in its closet after suspending service to both cities last month. Both cities will see their service to Amsterdam resume on December 7 now that US borders are reopening.
- Pakistan International Airlines owes $758 million in unpaid debts. Its strategy of saying it “never got the invoices” seems to have run its course as the Pakistani Civil Aviation Authority is threatening to cut all services if it doesn’t pay its debt by November 1. The chances of PIA coming up with nearly $800 million in the next five weeks are, to put it bluntly, not good.
- Pegasus Airlines is resuming twice daily service between London/Stansted and Istanbul/Gokcen (SAW) and 5x-weekly service between Manchester and SAW.
- PLAY will be playing in Amsterdam this summer, flying twice-weekly from Reykjavik beginning December 3.
- Thai Lion took delivery of an A330-900 this week.
- United should be given all advantages at Newark because it’s totally full and can’t take service from any new carrier, but United can add whatever flights it wants according to what the Commerce & Industry Association of New Jersey as filed with the DOT today.
I failed my driving test today. The instructor asked me, “What do you do at a red light?” I said, “I usually check my emails and see what people are up to on Facebook.”