Amtrak Drivers Forget to Stop at Stations So Often They Have a Procedure for That, and More

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • What game theory tells us about United and overbooking

  • Amtrak train engineer isn’t paying attention, forgets to stop at station and apparently this happens often enough they have a procedure for this.

    [T}he train is to stop at the next scheduled station, let off both sets of passengers, and Amtrak is to get the passengers whose stop was missed on the next train back to that stop; Amtrak will hold the appropriate train should this occur. (Passengers who were getting on would have to wait for the next train to arrive that would take them in that direction.)

  • United breaks guitars American Airlines breaks surf boards

  • Hyatt — albeit not the elite status changes — has become an issue in the Illinois governors race.

  • The Austin Airport Salt Lick Barbecue is doubling in size. Salt Lick isn’t even good barbecue for Central Texas, but I suppose it’s good airport barbecue and the Austin location is better than the one at DFW.

  • Hyatt is introducing in-room streaming entertainment projected onto your TV.

    With Staycast, Hyatt guests can connect and stream their favorite entertainment channels in their guestroom TVs without having to enter a code or personal credentials on the TV, as they might when using Marriott’s Enseo-powered in-room streaming, for example. Guests using the service must already have established accounts with subscription-based services like Netflix (or sign up for a trial subscription), for example, to be able to stream that content onto the guest room TV.

    …“Instead of guests having to download multiple apps to do streaming and pair their device with the TV, once they download the app there’s a simple set up they do in the mobile app to do that pairing,” Bzdawka explained.

  • Cathay Pacific’s CEO is stepping down

  • In arguing that the US should pursue a policy of protectionism to line the pockets of airlines at the expense of consumers, United CEO Oscar Munoz declared that Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar aren’t ‘real’ airlines. Emirates has a video response (HT: One Mile at a Time) and it might as well as “we don’t drag you down the aisle and bloody you when you fly.”

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. I will agree with you about Salt Lick. I travel to Gonzales biweekly and Baker Boys down there is much much better.

  2. the game theory article is one of the best you’ve linked to recently ! keep up the good work (and i’m saying this sincerely not sarcastically)

  5. I love StayCast at the San Francisco Hyatts. It is always disappointing to check into a room at a different hotel that has the same TV menu system, but no casting ability.

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