The Top Airline Stories From the Month of August

In baseball parlance, August is known as the dog days of summer. The game slows down a little bit and the players are tired and simply look like they are going through the motions. 

In some respects, the airline world is like that as it gets ready to go into the fall and holiday seasons. 

Unusual things seem to happen in August. 

Like the woman with a peanut allergy who bought up all of the nut packages on a flight so that no one else around her could have them. 

Or the woman who flew into Australia and forgot to declare a single rose. And it cost her $1,200. 

Read on for the rest of August’s highlights. 

 

It used to be called simply The Shuttle. Then it went away. Now it’s back. American Airlines has decided to bring back its popular New York to Boston route. 

A woman with a peanut allergy kindly asked the flight attendants on a flight not to distribute anything with nuts in them. They declined. So she bought up all the nut packages on the flight at her own expense. 

It’s safe to say that the Federal Aviation Administration is serious about this prosecution stuff. The FAA is turning over the names of several people who were unruly on flights to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  

Avelo Airlines is being awfully aggressive for a so-called upstart airline. Avelo plans to add to its winter route map by flying a flight to Puerto Rico. 

Southwest Airlines makes a change to its boarding process. But the catch is, it may cost some passengers more money. 

The Transportation Security Administration had threatened to investigate the CLEAR program after a man was able to slip through with live ammunition. But instead of requiring all members to show identification, the TSA backed off of the program. 

This is one expensive rose. A woman who was given a rose at the Qatar Airport carried it with her on her next flight to Australia. Big no no. She forgot to declare it and since there is a rule in Australia about bringing in plants and vegetation, she would find the equivalent of $1,200 in US dollars. 

Violence, physical and verbal, is on the upswing on airlines. So the nation’s flight attendants have renewed their push to have mandatory training in the martial arts to help subdue unruly passengers. 

The Federal Aviation Administration wants airports to take more of a role in the runway incursions and near-misses of late. To that end, the FAA has ordered nearly 100 airports across the country to conduct emergency meetings to discuss the problem. 

The new agreement between American Airlines and its pilots union could prove to be costly. For the consumer, that is. American said it might have to raise prices across the board in the third quarter to help pay for the new deal with the pilots.