JetBlue design aims to cut lines
The big LAX terminal shuffle will allow the airline to double the number of check-in positions.
JetBlue Airways is promising that LAX’s massive airline shuffle, which kicked off Friday night, will allow it to do away with a big travel headache: lines.
By moving next week from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 at Los Angeles International Airport, the New York-based carrier will eventually have enough space to double the number of check-in positions and self-serve kiosks that it currently has.
JetBlue’s move will take place Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, part of a major airline relocation at LAX, where 15 carriers are moving to new terminals to allow Delta Air Lines to gain more terminal space and get better access to the airport’s international terminal as well as the carrier’s partners, including Aeromexico, Virgin Atlantic and WestJet.
By this summer, JetBlue plans to complete a redesign of the new terminal to include 10 check-in positions and 10 kiosks. The kiosks will allow passengers to tag their own bags and drop them onto a conveyor belt for screening.
JetBlue has installed a similar lobby design at bustling Terminal 5 of New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. The setup also can be found at airports in Atlanta; Boston; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Newark, N.J.; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The New York-based carrier has described the layout as a “lineless lobby,” free of the queuing ropes and stanchions that are ubiquitous in most terminals. But when pressed, JetBlue officials say there may be a rare occasion when crowds are big enough to have to form a line.
“Our new self-service design eliminates the long, snaking lobby line common in airports,” JetBlue spokesman Morgan Johnston said. “Even at our busiest terminal — JFK T5 — we rarely see a pre-security queue greater than four customers.”
Marriott goes modular
To speed hotel construction, Marriott International is increasingly using prefabricated rooms that can be stacked like shoeboxes with a crane.
The Maryland-based hotel company — the world’s largest lodging business — plans to sign deals for 50 hotel construction projects in 2017 that will use prefabricated rooms, including a hotel scheduled to begin construction this year in Hawthorne.
Modular construction shortens building time and reduces the need for skilled labor at the construction site. The prefabricated rooms are built in a factory, painted and furnished before they are put on a truck and shipped to the construction site.
The practice has become popular in Europe and Asia. In the U.S., industry experts say, the use of prefabricated rooms has just started to grow, spurred by the demand for new hotels and the improved quality of modular construction.
“I think it is something we are going to see more of going forward,” said Alan X. Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group.
Despite having prefabricated rooms, the designs of the new hotels are not limited to squares or rectangles, Marriott spokeswoman Alycia Chanin said.
“The hotels can look all shapes and sizes,” she said.
The first hotel built under Marriott’s new modular effort, the 97room Folsom Fairfield Inn & Suites, opened in December. Marriott has four other projects in various states of completion in Washington state, Oklahoma, Kentucky and North Carolina.
Construction of the 354-room hotel in Hawthorne is expected to be completed in six months, compared with the estimated 20 months needed without prefabricated rooms.
Alaska’s ‘Elite Leave’
A new mother called Alaska Airlines with a problem: Her elite status with the carrier’s loyalty reward program was going to expire because she wasn’t planning to fly with her baby anytime soon.
That was the birth of a first-ofits-kind program in the U.S. It is called Elite Leave, and it allows new parents to freeze their elite status on the Alaska Mileage Plan for a year.
Foreign carriers such as Air Canada, British Airways and Qantas offer similar programs, but no other U.S.-based carrier gives such a break to new mothers.
At Alaska Airlines, once you accumulate enough points on the Mileage Plan program to earn elite status, you retain that status for the next full calendar year. But to maintain your status for the following year, you need to continue to accumulate loyalty points.
Brian Kelly, an expert on loyalty reward programs who founded the website The Points Guy, said the system keeps fliers on a “hamster wheel,” constantly accruing and monitoring their points total.
Under the new Elite Leave program, which Alaska Airlines announced just in time for Mother’s Day, new mothers — and fathers — can extend their status until the following calendar year without having to earn new points. To qualify, fliers need to email Alaska Airlines with some basic information and a letter from a doctor or an employer, showing proof of pregnancy or parental leave from work.