Cheap Caribbean Flights, How American Flight Attendants Union Resemble Congress, And An Airline Is Removing Seats?

The Best of the Rest is my effort to summarize all the travel/miles & points stories that interested me on a daily basis but didn’t have time to write about in length.  On a daily basis, I try to keep track of roughly 100 different blogs (try being the operative word) that have interesting things for you and I to learn from.  Some are passed along without comment, while I add my analysis to others.   This is your shortcut to find out what’s going on in the travel world without having to read dozens of travel blogs to get all the best info.

Here’s what I’m reading about today:

Cheap Flight(s) of The Day: Looking for somewhere warm?  Try Boston to Puerto Rico for $261.  Cold?  Alaska for $156 from Seattle.

Cranky Flier chronicles the events leading up to the forced resignation of Laura Glading, the embattled President of American Airlines’ flight attendants union.  She went out and got a really good contract for her rank and file.  There’s even escalation clauses if their counterparts and United and Delta get pay raises.  So, for sure, that means she has to go.  Fringe factions of the unions thought she should have done better and forced her to announce an early resignation.  Then, they threatened to sue, in part because they didn’t want her in control for the next 2 months leading up to her resignation.  So, she quit this past week.

Sound familiar?  John Boehner’s support group now has two members.

This really just strikes me as dumb.  Spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to try to overturn a contract that’s legally binding?  Sign me up!  This shouldn’t be surprising, considering this is the group that voted down an extra $81 million the last time they had a chance to vote on something.  As Brett says, this is a dangerous cycle.

Meanwhile, Delta seems to be doing things to keep their (non-union) flight attendants happy.  They’re removing seats from a decent chunk of their airplanes!  I don’t think customers will see better service because there are 3 less seats.  Delta does a pretty good job with in-flight service now.  But, as Lucky says, this move should make for happier flight attendants.  In the end, that has considerable worth.

Did you know you can renew your Global Entry membership online?  I didn’t, and it’s been about 5 years for me.

Southwest is the latest airline to have a technical glitch snarl travel.

American Airlines is about to decide it needs a bit more down under, with New Zealand service in the works.