- For those wanting to still do $1 Amazon reloads, you can do them via Pepper.
- Southwest Flights Showing Up on Capital One Travel Portal (YMMV) by DDG.
- DOT Penalizes Lufthansa $4 Million for Violating Passengers’ Civil Rights.
- stealth deval for AA awards booked on Finnair Avios.
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Here’s another one to include:
https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/dot-issues-landmark-50-million-penalty-against-american-airlines-its-treatment
DOT Issues Landmark $50 Million Penalty Against American Airlines for Its Treatment of Passengers with Disabilities
While some of these links can be useful/interesting, “DOT Penalizes Lufthansa $4 Million for Violating Passengers’ Civil Rights” is politics in its purest form. With all respect, I don’t find it a sensible editorial choice for an independent financial blog 13 days before the election.
Did you read the article or just a headline?
The violation, which the headline didn’t mention, was Lufthansa denying boarding on a connecting flight to 128 Jewish passengers who were not all traveling together, but Lufthansa action was based on misbehavior on an earlier flights by just a few of those passengers.
And at the bottom, the article talks about how the DOT now reviews all of these complaints with a bipartisan group of state attorney generals.
I did, even if I already knew where the article was going. Read past the Lufthansa indictment and through the end, and you’ll also see a shameless plug for the “Biden-Harris Administration.”
Everybody agrees that the outgoing administration is desperately in need of the votes of certain demographics. But again, let’s also agree that it’s not appropriate for a reputable, independent financial blog to offer this sort of explicit political content.
Why does everyone need to agree with you?
How is it politics? Not sure what the election has to do with it either.
How is it politics to link an article that openly praises the Biden-Harris administration 13 days before an election where they both tried to compete and one of them is technically still a candidate?? Please…
Could you have done something differently here? There’s not a thing that comes to mind…
What would you like done differently? I linked to the official DoT enforcement notice.
I know this is an official DoT release… And precisely because of that, it should be no surprise that a document issued by an executive department of the Biden-Harris administration right before the election ends up singing the praises of the… Biden-Harris administration!
What would I do differently? On a blog with a strong reputation in a field that begs to remain independent, simply don’t allow content that may suggest a political bias on the editors’ part — with ZERO exceptions during election cycles.
If the DoT decides to fine Lufthansa now for an incident that occurred in May 2022… well, then we can definitely wait another couple weeks before reporting it.
First of all, it’s hard to define “election cycle” precisely. There are lots of different definitions of it. Some definitions make it seems like all 4 years are an election cycle, if some candidate says they’re going to run in the next election 4 years before that. Would that mean you want these kinds of articles to be banned 100% of the time??? But how can you form a rule about election cycles if no one agree on what an election cycle is?
Second, how do you know that anyone noticed that this article was saying what you said it said until you started talking about it? Even I, reacting to your post, didn’t read the article and notice everything that it said, I just scanned it. So if I just scanned it, and only because you posted about, how many people who have actual read it (part or especially all) had you not mentioned it?
So it could be argued that you bringing this article to everyone’s attention had much more political effect than the original article, because perhaps very few people would have looked at that article had you not brought it up.
Remember, this article was not mentioned in the Recap headline, and was just part of the “and more”.
And this is far from the first time a government organization has been mentioned in a DoC Recap this election cycle, even this month. On Oct 1, there was a headline in the title about Justice Department Suing Visa, but you mentioned nothing about it back then or even now. So you don’t even seem to aware of how many articles about government actions there have recently been on this site.
And in case you’re not aware, there was another government action reported this week on many other travel sites but which I haven’t noticed on this site, about US (based on DOT findings) fining American Airlines about wheelchair access. Why aren’t you commending DoC for not mentioning that, if you think all government actions should not be reported right now?
Oh (just added in an edit a few minutes later): I just noticed on TPG an article today about “Biden administration launches probe into ‘state of competition in air travel'”. That article mentioned “Biden administration” in the headline, while the article you complained about here only mentioned “DOT” in the headline. So are you complaints misplaced, just you can post comments here and you can’t at TPG?
You need to be aware that a lot of people think the exact opposite of you: That something that is news should be reported, anytime.
And you need to ask yourself, is this just a travel site, or also a travel news site (the weekly Recap columns suggest the latter), and if the latter, it’s protected by the free speech. And again, people are likely to disagree on the precise category definition of each site.
Main character syndrome? lol
Wasn’t that phrase used on the “Contact Us” page recently? I had to look it up at the time. Had you heard of it before that?
Possibly… I don’t remember where I came across it recently, but I know people are often jokingly referred to as main characters or npcs.
The comment on the “Contact Us” page was definitely not made in a joking manner. That comment caused a lot of drama. I’m surprised that you don’t remember it.
I found it and yes, that is probably where I last heard it. I only vaguely remember it because I often just skim over threads. Maybe its just me, but I find any use of the term inherently hilarious, same with Karen…
One doesn’t even know where to start here. So first your argument is that you don’t think I read the article. Then, when I show you its content, YOU suddenly hadn’t read it, but only “scanned it”… And you scanned it well enough to know the details of the Lufthansa incident, but not to notice a whole paragraph about the outgoing administration! I understand this is not the comment section of Mensa, but…..really???
I’ll stop here with you, though something you suggested is actually right: either all political content is tolerated or none should. And as I said, the latter is, in my view, the clever/more appropriate editorial position. I commented on this specific link when I noticed it; my advice would obviously be identical in other instances. But as it stands, this is
William Charles ‘s blog and business, not mine, so I wanted to see what he thinks.
PS: since we believe in your good faith when you seem to bring up “free speech” and “travel news”… here’s one more official link to Biden-Harris’ achievements in transportation, out of tons of similar news you could post on here (source: the House of Representatives).
https://homeland.house.gov/2024/04/30/new-documents-reveal-airports-used-by-secretary-mayorkas-to-fly-hundreds-of-thousands-of-inadmissible-aliens-into-u-s-via-chnv-mass-parole-scheme/
Should political comments also be censored? What about political jokes?
I’m always all for jokes, they are the secret of happiness! 🙂
On a website I happen to moderate (the main international site but on a TOTALLY different topic — the members there literally fight for a chance to SPEND millions of $$! :-)), we do have a dedicated section for jokes and other lighthearted stuff. It is run properly, and it IS fun. Not sure if it could be replicated here though, the nature of two sites (and, I sense, of most contributors) is vastly different. And even then, you’ll have your site turned into a circus within 5 minutes if you allow political jokes and are not willing to moderate firmly.
jbh?