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Hidden-City Ticketing: The Air Travel Hack That Could Get You Sued

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You can save money on hidden-city ticketing—but is it worth it?

Most travelers know that causing unruly behavior on a flight can lead to dire consequences, but many may not realize that you can also get in big trouble for not setting foot on a flight at all. While missing a leg of a flight might sometimes be unavoidable due to changes in travel plans, savvy travelers have been purposely missing the second leg of their flights for years to save hundreds of dollars on fares. Recently, Lufthansa Airlines even sued a passenger €2,112 ($2,374) for this practice, which is known as “hidden-city ticketing.” (A Berlin court dismissed the suit, but the carrier plans to appeal, according to CNN.)

But are the fares legal, and is it worth checking them out? Here’s what you need to know.

What is hidden-city ticketing?

The “hidden cities” in this context are all of the places that become much cheaper to fly to when you’re supposed to only be there for a few hours on a layover instead of a final destination. To be clear, we’re not talking about mystical destinations such as Colombia’s Lost City (although you should still definitely go there) but places such as Detroit or Houston that become much cheaper to fly to when they’re the appetizer instead of the main meal of your three-course flying experience. That’s because airline pricing depends on a lot of factors besides just the cost of fuel—competition on the route, the popularity of business travel, and other factors play a role.

As a hypothetical example, let’s say we’re flying from Boston to Oklahoma City and looking for flights. If you scour the main search engine websites such as Kayak or Google Flights, you’ll see many connecting flights to Oklahoma City with stops in other places such as Philadelphia or Chicago. However, the goal in hidden-city ticketing would be to find a journey where Oklahoma City is the layover on a flight to a final destination you don’t plan to visit. In the end, that could look like buying a flight between Boston to Los Angeles and getting off the plane with no intentions of setting foot on the West Coast.

So, how does one reveal these so-called hidden cities? The website Skiplagged pioneered this practice and is still up and running, even after United Airlines and Orbitz sued the company’s founder Aktarer Zaman in 2014 (Orbitz settled and the remaining case was eventually dropped because the judge said that court didn’t have jurisdiction, CNN reported). Today, Skipplagged has a “few million” active users per month that scour the website for flights or hotel deals, says Skiplagged’s Head of Design and Experience Philippe Ramet. These could be for hidden-city tickets that make up “a bit more than 20 percent” of flights on the website, or for the more “regular” flights that go from point A to B per usual.

While it’s true that you can save a lot of money using hidden-city tickets, we suggest looking at other options first due to issues that could arise at the airport and after the trip.

Is it legal?

Hidden-city ticketing tends to go against airlines’ rules, but actually getting sued for the practice is unlikely for those not doing it often. Lufthansa says “legal disputes in this context are very rare,” in part because recalculating the fare the passenger would have owed must follow certain laws.

Skiplagged says on its website that these hidden-city flights are “perfectly legal.” It looks like this is now the case for those traveling on Iberia due to a recent Spanish court decision. But regardless of the possible legal interpretations of hidden-city ticketing around the globe, there are still consequences and considerations that could affect your trip and relationship with airlines.

What are some possible trip complications?

One of the biggest reasons why it might be a good idea to look elsewhere for travel deals is that traveling on hidden-city tickets requires you to remember a lot of little rules.

For starters, flying on a hidden-city itinerary requires being extra careful about your baggage. Skiplagged tells customers not to check bags, but notes that even carry-ons could pose an issue if there’s not enough space on the aircraft. While some airlines can gate-check bags, others might check it to the final destination if there’s not enough room.

Another downside of traveling with hidden-city tickets is the risk of weather-related or logistical issues throwing a wrench in your plans. For example, you could be on a flight between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and Los Angeles with a stop in Chicago, but the airline would prioritize getting you to Los Angeles before putting you on another itinerary that happens to stop in Chicago. Offering to go to Chicago anyway through another itinerary could raise suspicion that you are purposely intending to get around that carrier’s fare rules.

“Hidden-city is a risky move to make; it is not without some potential risks to the traveler,” says Henry Harteveldt, travel industry analyst and president of San Francisco-based Atmosphere Research Group. He notes that if the itinerary changes, “the airline has every right to rebook you on one of those different flights.”

Airlines could cancel the rest of your flight if you don’t show up for one of the legs, so hidden-city ticketing is also unreliable for round-trip fares. There may even be an added cost in some cases.

“If a customer does not show up for his outbound flight, the return flight is still available to him as originally booked,” a Lufthansa spokeswoman told Condé Nast Traveler when asked if passengers get any warning before the airline takes action against hidden-city ticketing. “However, Lufthansa will then recalculate the ticket price which corresponds to the actual travel route (e.g. one-way fare).” Anyone who foresees missing a leg of a flight should notify the carrier immediately, she said.

And these are just the issues in transit. There are also some bigger consequences you will have to think about if you plan to use hidden-city ticketing.

What are some of the bigger consequences?

There’s a good chance you might not run into any of the above-mentioned problems, but you’ll also have to be aware of the potential, bigger consequences of using hidden-city ticketing.

A passenger that skips a leg of a flight for any reason once probably won’t get in trouble, but if the pattern persists there could be issues. Skiplagged warns customers on its website not to “overuse” these itineraries: “Do not fly hidden-city on the same route with the same airline dozens of times within a short time frame,” it states.

But how much is too much? Harteveldt warns that airlines now have better technology to catch those abusing the practice, and that flying hidden-city flights even once a year for several years might be enough to draw a carrier’s attention. He notes that eventual consequences could include sternly-worded letters asking for payment (like the one an elite reader of The Points Guy reportedly received), lawsuits, a forfeiture of frequent-flier miles, or even getting banned from an airline.

“Don’t say it can’t happen to you, because it could, and it doesn’t matter what route, what cabin class of service, what your frequent-flier status is or anything else,” Harteveldt says. “If you are serially abusing hidden-city fares, the airlines will at some point catch you—and they will take action.”

Where can I find my airline’s rules?

Whether using hidden-city flights or not, passengers do enter into an agreement with airlines about how their tickets can be used. These are outlined in a document known as the “contract of carriage” or “conditions of carriage,” and can usually be found on the airline’s website.

Chances are you’ll be going against an airline’s rules if you buy a ticket with the intent of missing a flight. American Airlines’ conditions of carriage, for example, note that “reservations made to exploit or circumvent fare and ticket rules are strictly prohibited.” It cites hidden-city fares as an example, along with some other activities including buying a ticket just to use the lounge or booking a ticket for someone without their permission. American says if you are exploiting the airline, it could “charge you for what the ticket would have cost if you hadn’t booked it fraudulently,” cancel the rest of the itinerary, or even refuse that person the right to fly.

How else can I save money on tickets, legally?

Airline pricing isn’t straightforward, but knowing some tricks of the trade can help you find airfare deals without setting yourself up for the pitfalls of hidden-city ticketing. For example, routes with a lot of competition and low-cost carriers can lead to better deals, Harteveldt says.

Using a price tracker such as those available on Kayak, flexing your loyalty accounts or checking out one of the many e-mail lists for deals are all good options (Condé Nast Traveler has compiled several tips here). So, regardless of whether you’ll get caught, we suggest searching for other alternatives and paying a little more for some peace of mind.

Airline pilot: Is it still safe to fly in a Boeing 737 Max? Don’t worry about it just yet.

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A Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed in Ethiopia killing everyone on board. The crash of the Ethiopian Airlines plane marks the second deadliest accident involving a Boeing 737 in the past five months. So is there a problem with this particular model?
USA TODAY

Last October, a Boeing 737 Max 8, operated by a low-cost Indonesian airline called Lion Air, crashed  after takeoff from Jakarta, killing everyone on board. Then, on Sunday, an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max crashed near Addis Ababa, under eerily similar circumstances, killing 157 people from more than 30 countries.

The million dollar question is whether these accidents are linked, and whether Boeing’s 737 Max, the newest and most sophisticated variant of its venerable 737 line, harbors a deadly defect.

Reports of the Lion Air crash point to a flaw in something called MCAS, which stands for Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, an automatic system designed to keep the plane’s nose from pitching upward at too steep of an angle. The problem occurs when faulty data sense an impending aerodynamic stall when there isn’t one, triggering the plane’s stabilizer trim — stabilizers are the wing-like horizontal surfaces beneath the tail — to force the nose down.

Read more commentary:

Ethiopia crash of Boeing 737 Max might be latest example of backfiring safety efforts

Boeing: Safety will always be a core value

Have you gained or lost weight? Congrats, TSA is now tracking you for suspicious activity.

Essentially, evidence suggests that the Lion Air pilots lost control of their ability to maintain level flight and failed to recognize what was happening in time to disconnect the errant system.  

Did the same thing happen in Ethiopia? 

Grounding their Boeing 737 Max fleets

At this point it’s impossible to know, but certainly things are pointing in that direction, and a growing number of countries are worried enough to have ordered the grounding of their carriers’ 737 Max fleets. If the investigators do determine a link, there’s quite a bit at stake — for the plane’s manufacturer, for the world’s airlines and for the traveling public. Boeing will need to implement a fix, be it a hardware solution, a software solution or both, in a process that is likely to take weeks or longer.

In the meantime, is the Max safe to fly? The short answer is yes. Why the Ethiopian pilots didn’t simply override the errant MCAS, if in fact that’s what they were dealing with, isn’t understood. Perhaps, like the Lion Air crew before them, they were simply overwhelmed by a cascade of warnings, faulty messages and unstable aircraft movements.

But disconnecting the system is, or should be, pretty straightforward, and passengers can take some comfort in knowing that Max pilots everywhere, together with the various airline training departments, are acutely aware of the issue and how to deal with it.   

The outright grounding of an aircraft model is unusual but not unprecedented. New jets are sometimes beset by technical issues in their early days of service. Normally these problems are minor, if expensive, nuisances (engine problems plagued the first 747s, for example). But there have been catastrophic instances too.

Despite headlines, air travel is remarkably safe

We remember the Comet, the world’s first commercial jet, and the stress-crack disasters that led to its grounding and redesign. The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 was plagued by troubles from the start, including a poorly designed cargo door that  killed 346 people in the horrific Turkish Airlines crash in 1974. Five years later, all DC-10s in the United States were grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration after the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 killed 271 people at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport — to this day, the deadliest crash ever on U.S. soil, excluding the 9/11 attacks. More recently, the 787’s debut was marred by a series of battery fires.

For the airline passenger, these can seem like scary times. Air crashes, perhaps more than any other type of catastrophe, have a way of haunting the public’s consciousness, particularly when the causes are mysterious. 

My best advice, maybe, is to take a step back and look at this through a wider lens. The fact is, Lion Air and Ethiopian notwithstanding, air travel has never been safer. Out of 35 million commercial global flights in 2017, only two ended in accidents resulting in deaths of passengers.

Since the Lion Air incident, two fatal crashes in five months is tragic, but in decades past it wasn’t unusual to see a dozen or more air disasters worldwide in a given year. Nowadays, two or more is downright unusual.

In the United States, there hasn’t been a large-scale disaster involving a mainline carrier in a decade — an absolutely astonishing statistic. There are far more planes, carrying far more passengers, than ever before, yet the accident rate is a fraction of what it once was. Despite the recent headlines and until we know more information, then, airline passengers should fly easy.

Patrick Smith is an airline pilot and the host of www.askthepilot.com. His book, “Cockpit Confidential,” is a New York Times bestseller. Follow him on Twitter @askthepilot.

Princes William, Harry’s Penchant For Air Travel Criticized; Queen Elizabeth ‘More Frugal’

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Prince William and Prince Harry’s penchant for air travel has been criticized.

According to Daniela Elser of News.com.au, the Duke of Sussex had been a perennial favorite despite his past scandals including the controversial Nazi costume and naked Las Vegas scandal until now. Prince Harry has been criticized for his “naughty helicopter habit.”

Last week, Meghan Markle’s husband spoke at WE Day in Wembley Stadium and encouraged the audience to take action against climate change. It was later learned that two days before the event, the royal took a 45-minute chopper trip that cost $7,854. He could have saved more if he took the 83-minute train trip for only $45.

The helicopter emissions are at least five times higher compared to other transport modes and this contradicts his speech. Due to this, Prince Harry was called “hypocrite” and “full of hot heir.”

Elser added that Prince Harry shares this penchant for air travel with his older brother Prince William. The Duke of Cambridge routinely uses private helicopters. The second-in-line to the throne made headlines back in 2008 for borrowing one of the military’s $18 million Chinook helicopters to make a quick visit to Kate Middleton when they were still dating. Prince William could have driven there in just around half an hour.

Prince William was also criticized for flying himself to cousin Peter Phillips’ stag do and stopping along the way in London to pick up Prince Harry. Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s sons love for traveling using expensive choppers is at odds with the older royals “more frugal ways.”

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip regularly travel by public train. The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh head to Sandringham every year and they stick to this mode of transportation since then.

In December, Her Majesty was photographed arriving at King’s Lynn Station from London to spend the holidays in Sandringham. The Queen was seated in first class and walked alongside her security. She reportedly briefly mingled with the other passengers when she walked her way inside the train before taking her seat.

Prince William and Prince Harry’s choice to use choppers was compared to their uncle Prince Andrew’s expensive travel habits. The Duke of York was dubbed “Air Miles Andy” for always traveling with five officials, flying first class on chartered planes and staying in five-star hotels.

Prince William and Prince Harry’s penchant for air travel is similar to uncle Prince Andrew, while their grandparents Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip tend to be more frugal. Pictured: Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II, Kate Middleton, Prince Harry and Prince William during ‘The Patron’s Lunch’ celebrations for The Queen’s 90th birthday at The Mall on June 12, 2016 in London. Photo: Getty Images/Jeff Spicer

How safe is air travel in 2019?

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Although it is possible that there may be a serious issue with the new Boeing 737-8 MAX, it’s a very new aircraft, so your chances of even having to think about boarding one are very low. There are just 350 flying around the globe, that’s less than one percent of aircraft in use today.

And, to answer the most common question I’ve heard today, no, Air New Zealand do not operate any aircraft of this type.

Historically the 737 has not only been the workhorse and backbone for so many airlines, it’s also been the biggest seller for manufacturer Boeing with over 10,000 sold since the first one took off in 1967.

Statistics from the United States Government and website Aviation Safety Network show that incidents like these are becoming less common, and air remains one of the safest ways to travel.

Travel fatalities, especially involving aircraft are rare, so are often measured as ‘deaths per billion journeys taken.’ Here’s how air travel compares to other means of transportation.

Death rates across different modes of travel:

  • Bus: One death per 4.3 billion journeys taken.
  • Rail: One death per 20 billion journeys taken.
  • Van: One death per 20 billion journeys taken. 
  • Car: One death per 40 billion journeys taken.
  • Foot: One death per 40 billion journeys taken.
  • Water: One death per 90 billion journeys taken.
  • Air: One death per 117 billion journeys taken.
  • Bicycle: One death per 170 billion journeys taken. 
  • Motorcycle: One death per 1640 billion journeys taken.
  • Skydiving: One death per 7500 billion journeys taken.

Meanwhile, data from the United States Statistics Department shows you are 80 times more likely to die by choking on food and 95 times more likely to be killed by gunfire than dying in a plane crash.

What are the odds? 

  • Heart disease: One in six.
  • Cancer: One in seven.
  • Car accident: One in 103
  • Falling over: One in 114
  • Gun Assault: One in 285
  • Being hit as a Pedestrian: One in 556
  • Motorcycle crash: One in 858
  • Drowning: One in 1,117
  • Fire or Smoke: One in 1,474
  • Choking on Food: One in 2,696
  • Bicycle crash: One in 4,047
  • Accidental Gun Discharge: One in 8,527
  • Electrocution, Radiation, Extreme Temperatures and Pressure: One in 15,638
  • Sharp objects: One in 28,000
  • Cataclysmic Storm: One in 31,394
  • Hornet, wasp and bee stings: One in 46,562
  • Dog attack: One in 115,111
  • Passenger on an airplane: One in 188,364
  • Lightning: One in 218,106
  • Railway passenger: One in 243,765

Year on year:
 

Despite a spike in airplane fatalities in 2018 to 561, the number of deaths caused by plane crashes has been trending down as technology improves and makes aircraft safer.

From Russia to Ethiopia, accidents involving air travel have killed hundreds in the past year

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Napkins close to the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines plane crash near Bishoftu, Ethiopia, on Sunday. (Tiksa Negeri/Reuters) Emily Tamkin March 10

Ethiopian Airlines announced Sunday morning that all 157 people on a flight that crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, had been killed.

In the past year, accidents involving passenger planes have killed hundreds — a stark contrast from 2017.

There were no deaths in commercial jet accidents in 2017, making it the safest year on record for commercial air travel. President Trump even sent out a tweet taking credit for airline safety.

But more than 500 people were killed in passenger plane accidents in 2018. Airline safety groups providing the data stress that fatal crashes are nevertheless rare and commercial flights remain one of the safest forms of travel.

The following list shows the foreign deadly air crashes that occurred last year:

February 2018: A Russian plane crashed shortly after taking off from Moscow. The plane was headed to a city near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan. Over 70 people died.


Rescuers work at the scene of a plane crash in a village about 25 miles from the Moscow airport on Feb. 11, 2018. (Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations/AP)

February 2018: Sixty-five people were killed when a twin-engine turboprop flown by Aseman Airlines went down in southern Iran. Later in 2018, the imposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran — including the prohibition on the sale of planes to the country — had some concerned that air travelers in Iran would be at risk because of aging planes and technology.

March 2018: More than 50 people were killed when a US-Bangla Airlines flight from Dhaka, Bangladesh, crashed at the airport in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. Investigators attributed the crash to the captain suffering an “emotional breakdown” during the flight.

May 2018: Over 100 people died when a Boeing 737 leased by the Mexican company Damojh to Cuba’s national airline, Cubana, crashed shortly after taking off from Havana.


Mourners pray and cry during a service on May 20, 2018, in memory of the victims of a plane crash in Havana. (Ramon Espinosa/AP)

October 2018: A Boeing 737 Max crashed not long after departing from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 people onboard. Investigators later found that the plane, part of Lion Air, should never have left the ground. Technical problems had previously been reported.

In March, relatives of some of the victims of the Lion Air crash sued Boeing. The suit points the blame at the new flight-control system on the 737 Max. The Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed Sunday was the same Boeing 737 Max 8 model.

Pan Am time machine: This elaborate dinner theater recreates air travel from the 1970s

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It’s a Saturday in the outskirts of Los Angeles, and about 50 people are ready to board an airplane for a colorful and memorable journey back to the 1970s.

Compared to most international flights, this one is short — only four hours. And though the flight will transport everyone on the passenger list to another place and time, it logs a whopping total of zero air miles, as it never actually leaves the ground.

Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of the Pan Am Experience. One-part re-enactment, one-part dinner theater and one-part memorabilia overload, the attraction mixes top-quality food with elaborate detail to recreate what it was like to fly a Boeing 747 with one of the world’s most beloved airlines long before its bankruptcy and dissolution in 1991.

“People always talk about how it’s not the destination but the journey that’s important,” says Talaat Captan, who co-founded the experience with Anthony Toth back in 2014.

“We believe that. People come to us to travel somewhere and not go anywhere. To them, the value is in the experience.”

It’s dinner theater from the golden age of flight. (Joshua Sarlo/CNN)

This summer marks the five-year anniversary of the attraction, and it has gotten more elaborate every year. Props have become more authentic. Actors have developed characters. There’s also now a fashion show, and the uniforms represent one of the largest collections of vintage flight attendant uniforms anywhere in the world.

The Pan Am Experience is as close as you can get to experiencing Pan Am without engaging in actual time travel, which is why people are so keen to climb aboard they book their seats months in advance.

Cleared for take-off

The experience begins outside a row of warehouse buildings in Pacoima, an LA suburb near Burbank. Guests enter from the parking lot on a red carpet and find a studio decked out like a 1960s airplane terminal. In one corner: A series of airline ticket counters, including an exact replica (computer and all) of a Pan Am desk from the era. On the other side: A lounge that comprises circular bars surrounded by stools and furniture made from old airplane parts.

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Head to the Pan Am counter to check into your “flight.” (Joshua Sarlo/CNN)

The back of the room is lined with a screen depicting the exterior of a Pan Am 747, circa 1971.

Guests check in at the Pan Am desk with Captan, who gives them paper boarding passes exactly like the originals from back in the day. A gate agent ushers them to the lounge, where drinks are complimentary.

About an hour in, a voice blares over the crackling loudspeaker: “Would the flight crew please report to the ticket counter?”

Without missing a beat, “Captain” Toth and 14 “flight attendants” dressed in vintage garb enter and head to the ticket counter for their “assignments.” Crew members then proceed up a jet bridge toward the plane screen in the back of the studio, open a cabin door and invite guests to join them. Their message is clear: All aboard!

The main event

Flight attendants seat guests in one of three sections of the plane: Clipper Class, which was the original business class; First Class; and the Upper Deck Lounge, which historically was part of First.

Once everyone is comfortable, the “purser” gives a series of announcements, and flight attendants go through safety demonstrations. The script is a mix of throwback warnings and modern wit: “Unless we have an earthquake tonight, there won’t be much movement, so your seat belt isn’t really necessary.”

After a welcome video from Toth, flight attendants wheel out magazine carts, distribute magazines, take drink orders and bring hot towels in buckets of dry ice, creating an almost magical smoke.

The view is terrific. (Joshua Sarlo/CNN)

Finally, the meal begins. A white-jacketed maître-d brings out menus. Flight attendants pull out retractable tables and set them with Pan Am-branded tablecloths, dishes and silverware. Upper Deck Lounge guests get a caviar course first. Then everyone chooses between appetisers of shrimp cocktail and caprese salad.

Following a fashion show of Pan Am uniforms from the late 1960s and early ’70s, a throwback dinner is served: Chateaubriand sliced tableside or roast chicken, both served with carrots, green beans and potatoes. (There’s a pasta option for vegetarians, too.) As guests eat, disco plays on the cabin speaker system.

Trivia and another fashion show of uniforms from the 1980s follow dinner, leading into a wine-and-cheese course, Cognac, coffee and chocolate mousse cake or fruit tart for dessert.

A third and final fashion show of airline uniforms from all over the world closes the night.

Cigarettes and other details

Throughout the experience, it’s clear that Toth and Captan have spared no expense to make the flight authentic.

That means the seatbelt buckles are original, complete with the Pan Am globe logo etched into the top. It also means each of the table floral arrangements has sprigs of baby’s breath, just like the arrangements of the 1970s.

Even the cigarettes — props that puff smoke when you blow them — are eerily lifelike.

“Back in the 1970s, everybody on board airplanes smoked,” says Toth. “There was no way we were going to recreate this experience without trying to recreate that.”

Drink offerings include 1970s-approved Harvey Wallbangers and Tab soda. Hot towels smell the way they used to: Flight attendants soak them in some of the same scents as Pan Am used historically. The seat fabrics reflect the fading sun and moon designs of the day.

Another mind-boggling detail from the original Pan Am planes: The “nose wall,” a needlepoint artwork at the front of the First-Class cabin that depicts a sailboat on the water on a sunny afternoon.

The owners of the Pan Am experience have a collection of vintage airline items. (Joshua Sarlo/CNN)

For guests who have a history with the airline — former flight attendants or family members of former Pan Am employees — these tiny touches are more than an appreciated detail; they’re a link to the past.

“As soon as I saw the First-Class cabin, I started crying,” says Michelle Fedder, who started her career as a flight attendant with Pan Am and recently met three former colleagues here. “It was like they took my memories out of my brain and brought them back to life.”

Brice Cooper, creative director at Pan American World Airways, the New Hampshire company that licenses Pan Am trademarks worldwide, agrees.

“What they’ve done here in recreating the vibe and feel of flying on Pan Am is nothing short of remarkable,” he says.

Evolution of a dream

The Pan Am Experience is really Toth’s brainchild.

The 52-year-old has been obsessed with planes since his childhood, and fell in love with Pan Am while flying to Europe one summer to visit his grandparents in Italy. He acquired his first pair of airplane seats when he was 16, and started making trips to the airplane graveyard in the Mojave Desert to buy airplane parts in his 20s.

Eventually, he had enough parts to build the ground floor of the 22-foot-long Pan Am set in his garage. He moved the set to a storage facility so he could break out his prized spiral staircase and create a second floor.

That first set forms the bones of the Pan Am Experience today.

Sometime around 2014, after the ill-fated television show, “Pan Am,” mutual friends connected Toth and Captan, who had heard about the set and wanted to see it up close. He was blown away.

Captan, a long-time movie producer who immigrated to the US from Lebanon when he was 17, had the idea to use the set to host an event, and a trial dinner sold out at an aviation memorabilia collectors’ show in a matter of minutes. Demand was so high, the duo ended up hosting more events. Later that year, Captan moved Toth’s set into Air Hollywood, his aviation-themed film studio here. The Pan Am Experience has been flying high ever since.

Vegas, here we come?

Nowadays, the Pan Am Experience takes off every Saturday at 6pm sharp, and about half are open to the public. Tickets for the dinners are sold in pairs and range in price from $674 (US$475) to $1242 (US$875), depending on seating class.

The next two public dinners scheduled for March 9 and March 23 are sold out, and there’s a waiting list for dinners later in the year.

The food is classic 1970s cuisine. (Joshua Sarlo/CNN)

Captan and Toth hope to open an outpost in Las Vegas.

Details of the expansion are still under development, but Captan says the new experience likely would include turbulence and white noise. More seats on the set and a separate bar and gift shop open to the public throughout the week also are likely.

“My hope is that people who never got a chance to fly Pan Am get an opportunity to see how fantastic air travel was back in the era, while those who might have been able to experience it bring back memories that remind them of the good old days,” says Toth. “This is a part of our history worth celebrating.”

Air travel delays trickle down to North Texas airports

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DALLAS — Weather and high traffic volume across parts of the country trickled down to delays for numerous North Texas flights Saturday.

“We were delayed about fifteen minutes – but that’s no big deal,” said Bonnie Sparks of Long Beach, Calif., in town to see her nephew.

Her delay was mild, but that wasn’t the case for everyone.

Snow and ice delayed flights for more than an hour out of Minneapolis, high winds set San Francisco air traffic back nearly two hours and in New York, sheer volume forced an hour-long delay. That’s according to airport status information provided by the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center.

This has families like the Chavezes of Garland trying to make the most of a Spring Break that just started.

“The strategy is early, early, early. Get to the airport at least two hours before, because we just saw the line right now and if we’d been here fifteen minutes afterword we’d still be in line,” said Felix Chavez, who’s en route to San Diego from Dallas Love Field Airport.

By day’s end, Southwest Airlines canceled 20 flights due to what a spokesperson referred to as an “air traffic control gridlock.”

“We’ve always done well with Southwest so we’re [crossing our fingers],” Chavez said.

This as Love Field tweeted to travelers to anticipate what it’s calling a “super-busy” Sunday.

American Airlines also confirmed Sunday that the airline has experienced 50 cancellations and “scattered delays.”

The past year in deadly air travel

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By Emily Tamkin | The Washington Post

Ethiopian Airlines announced Sunday morning that all 157 people on a flight that crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, had been killed.

In the past year, accidents involving passenger planes have killed hundreds — a stark contrast from 2017.

There were no deaths in commercial jet accidents in 2017, making it the safest year on record for commercial air travel. President Donald Trump even sent out a tweet taking credit for airline safety.

But more than 500 people were killed in passenger plane accidents in 2018. Airline safety groups providing the data stress that fatal crashes are nevertheless rare and commercial flights remain one of the safest forms of travel.

The following lists the deadly air crashes that occurred last year:

  • February 2018: A Russian plane crashed shortly after taking off from Moscow. The plane was headed to a city near Russia’s border with Kazakhstan. Over 70 people died.
  • February 2018: Sixty-five people were killed when a twin-engine turboprop flown by Aseman Airlines went down in southern Iran. Later in 2018, the imposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran – including the prohibition on the sale of planes to the country – had some concerned that air travelers in Iran would be at risk because of aging planes and technology.
  • March 2018: More than 50 people were killed when a US-Bangla Airlines flight from Dhaka, Bangladesh, crashed at the airport in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. Investigators attributed the crash to the captain suffering an “emotional breakdown” during the flight.
  • May 2018: More than 100 people died when a Boeing 737 leased by the Mexican company Damojh to Cuba’s national airline, Cubana, crashed shortly after taking off from Havana.
  • October 2018: A Boeing 737 Max crashed not long after departing from Jakarta, Indonesia, killing all 189 people on board. Investigators later found that the plane, part of Lion Air, should never have left the ground. Technical problems had previously been reported.

In March, relatives of the some of the victims of the Lion Air crash sued Boeing. The suit points the blame at the new flight-control system on the 737 Max. The Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed Sunday was the same Boeing 737 Max 8 model.

First Class Air Travel Graph Falls

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Dubai is like an imaginary world where everything is extremely pleasant for affluent propel. At the city airport, there are three world-class lounges available for each Emirates’ first-class passenger. Each of them is so huge that thousands of people make their accommodation comfortably. But only around a hundred or so register their presence in each Emirates’ first-class lounge. The lounge is completely full of luxury as expensive caviar and champagne available for free. Sometimes the Emirates’ manager captures the reaction of new arrivals amazed by its vibrant facilities.

But need to put the thinking cap. On when it happens that hundreds of armchairs get empty in the lounge. Nowadays first-class services losing its charm across the world and on of the top seller in this is Emirates’ also having declined in it.

In 20017 when Emirates opened a new board bar and lounge for its most affluent people, at the same time the competition was raised by its rival Qatar Airways by launching first skyborne double bed to attract more comfort.

There is so many analyses which expect that very soon, the first class will disappear. A decade and more years ago there were plenty of airways providing first class service but now it’s 20 only do so. These decrease mostly common in long haul routes. As same Emirates also decreased its first-class seat from 14 to 11 in superjumbos and 12 to 6 for Singapore Airlines flight.

So, Emirates’ need to put some extra effort to make its first-class passenger worth it rather than just upgrading cavernous lounge. According to lounge manager its very puzzled doing what to get back the first-class passenger on the board.

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