News and notes from around the interweb:
- Sneaky approach to cancelling bookings by Le Meridien Maldives after honoring a mistake rate. Months after making reservations, and months before a stay, the hotel is emailing guests insisting on arrival and departure flight details within 24 hours to arrange seaplane transfers. If the guest is offline, like flying an American Airlines long haul flight with inop wifi they’re out of luck and their booking will be cancelled.
Did you jump on that cheap Le Méridien Maldives deal back in March? Well, check your email.
It seems the hotel is trying to cancel as many of these bookings as it can by imposing an artificial 24-hour deadline to respond with details (even though our stay is months away) pic.twitter.com/XIwpGfETMs
— JT Genter (@JTGenter) June 5, 2025
- Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo detained for an hour by TSA over sunflower seeds
- Condor A321 Misses Munich Curfew By 10 Seconds, Causing EIGHT-HOUR Detour
- El Paso brothers bought a broken-down 727 four months ago. They’re still not sure what to do with it. (HT: Joe R)
- You’ve got to have sno cones in North Texas. DFW airport is in the process of procuring a shaved ice truck. Seems like they might just contract for one on the occasions they need it though?
- I trust Costco with my data more than the contractors that feds have for their multistate database though.
- Every long haul Amtrak train, ever.
[T]he people seated right behind me struck up a conversation, as they quickly found they had a lot in common — the man had just been released from prison the day before, and the lady was going to Tampa to visit her son, who was locked up.
Separately, at the station, a woman ran into an old colleague, and introduced her stepson to him. “We used to work together at the Bureau of Prisons.”
About 20 minutes before we arrived in Tampa, an older lady with two bags came up, and tried to take a seat in the first row, next to another woman (there’s no assigned seating on this train). The second she did this, the other woman spread her body across both seats and said “what do you think you’re doing, you b*tch, these are my seats?”
You’re being awfully snobby about Amtrak. I have limited experience but nothing like what was described.
As to the Le Meridien, it’s a Marriott brand so expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed.
Shame on Marriott here. Le Meridian Maldives is trying to shift blame to consumers. I’ve been to Maldives many times, many properties. Unless it is literally the day before arrival, nothing ‘needs’ to be within 24 hours for TMA, the operator of the seaplanes. This is just a ploy, another ‘gotcha,’ to cover up their own mistakes. Fight it. Thanks as always to Gary for naming and shaming these bad practices.
Marriott could have just cancelled all the reservations due to a mistake fare (as numerous airlines have done) so it seems crazy IMHO to blame them for trying to limit the damage. The notice is reasonable.
Everything isn’t about YOU getting a cheap deal. These are businesses who should look out for their own self interest. Never forget that!
@ AC — Seriously? This notice is in no way reasonable. As 1990 says above, your flights only need to be arranged a day or two before departure. Perhaps you’ve never been to the Maldives?
@AC Thus contact law should be just disregarded? An advertisement is not a contract but an invitation to make a contract, any high school student knows that. Once Marriot accepted the reservation they entered into a contract.
What if it was the other way around. You book the room at $5,00,000 a night and then do not want to stay there and it sits empty. Does Marriott have an enforceable contract to have you pay for the empty room?
Game on.
I’ve taken every long haul Amtrak route in the system. Pretty sure those interactions have more to do with the fact they took place in Florida than that they took place on Amtrak.
Historically, I’ve been a fairly loyal Marriott customer. Between my decades of regular stays at both Marriott and Starwood properties, I’m lifetime Gold in Bonvoy and, until fairly recently, was a butt in bed Platinum.
But in the last 3 years, I’ve shifted almost all my business to Hilton and Accor, with some IHG on the side (depending on where in the world I’ve need to be) and I don’t miss Marriott at all. None of these other groups are perfect, of course, not least of their problems is lacking the “something everywhere” footprint of Marriott, but each one of them consistently does better than Marriott was doing. My last Marriott stay, an award stay at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House London, was miserable. Zero status recognition combined with all of the banal mediocrity that property has anyway. At least the location met our needs.
@tomri – has nothing to do with contract law. US courts have held that airlines and hotels can cancel reservations if they were booked due to a mistake fare. Some honor them and some don’t. Do a little research next time and you may learn something.
BTW hotels can typically cancel your reservation for no reason if they give reasonable notice (just like you can cancel typically up until a couple of days before). It works both ways (as it should). This happens all the time when hotels can sell rooms at a higher rate due to something like a college football weekend or a Taylor Swift concert.
If you don’t believe me, again, Google it! Usually you have zero legal recourse
@Gene – it is reasonable IMHO when they could have just cancelled the reservation (see above). At least Marriott is giving you a path to honor it which they don’t legally have to do.
Note to self :
Do NOT ‘seed’ TSA suspicion by transporting, joking about, or even referring to ANY Sunflower product ! Best avoid the permitted 3oz of Sunflower oil as well !
And what about those incendiary haz-mat threats of the racks of nut related trail mix packets post security ?
…lol ….
Seems like the same shady management/reservation team. LM Maldives tried to mess with me before on a points booking on a stay almost 2 years ago. Their reservation team is terrible. I gave them my seaplane info by email, got into an airplane, when I landed, I received message that my booking was cancelled due to me not giving them on time. Sent them an email with screenshot of the prior email, they said “nothing they can do, contact reservations”. They ended up restoring it after great effort. Arrived at the hotel and spent the first 48 hours complaining to every single staff how terrible their reservation team is.
I think the Condor flight could have had a flight buffer if they wanted to. As far as I know, almost all flights can fly faster if they have enough fuel. Poor time management or trying to test the rules.
@JNS
> As far as I know, almost all flights can fly faster if they have enough fuel.
TK;DR – nothing like that.
E
Discussion:
It’s a seaplane so mach stall is not an issue. That just means its limited by aerodynamic forces such as drag, and seaplane skids have a lot of it, and raw power to override it. Most pax xfr seaplanes are single-engine and they all are required to hav “enough fuel” but more fuel doesn’t mean they can or will fly faster.
Also don’t confuse airspeed with groundspeed. The prop and seaplane work in the air, but the ground doesn’t. You can’t ever make up with a tailwind what you lost with a headwind due to the square speed resistance factor.
If you like analogies check out how Formula One, the Indy Racing League, NASCAR, the Aussie V8 Supercars… they all went to SMALLER engines and LESS fuel because it’s a better win than carrying around a huge hunk of a metal engine that spends half its time heating up your brakes. It’s different for an aircraft, but cars don’t have to LIFT that engine to 15,000ft. Aircraft do.
Weight is everything.
Smaller engine – lower weight.
Fuel 6-8lb/gal (depending on type of fuel) – lower weight. For example a Lycoming IO-540 will burn 14-18gal/hr. That’s 100-140lb/hr. On a 3hr flight that’s 300-420lb or the equivalent of two pax.
So, no, fuel is not a factor to “fly faster”. Aircraft design (primarily drag from skids and shit-out stuff) and efficient lift surfaces (larger wings, etc.) and propulsion make the difference.
What this has to do with some stupid hotel making uncontracted last minute changes and cancellations… I don’t know. Guess I got suckered into this rabbit hole.
@Ehud Gavron, I will quote my entire post: “I think the Condor flight could have had a flight buffer if they wanted to. As far as I know, almost all flights can fly faster if they have enough fuel. Poor time management or trying to test the rules.” The word Condor was included to tie the response to the Condor A321 incident where the flight to Munich was 10 seconds late for the curfew. It does look like they tried to make up some time but not enough.
I got burned by being literally <5 mins late for a Condor check-in (in J) on my way to the Maldives. I don't completely blame them, but they were 100% unwilling to assist with anything, including rebooking. They said their hands were tied by the "system." It was an Alaska award ticket, and we ended up getting rebooked in Y on Qatar, because that's all that was available (this was the same time LHR decided to melt down again)… not a recommended experience.
Germans really, really like rules. It's good to know it sometimes screws them just as much as the rest of us. I feel bad for the passengers, but the tiniest bit of schadenfreude towards the airline.
I have tried shifting my business to Hilton but the lack of willingness to give the 4pm checkout I get a Marriott means I won’t be leaving Marriott.
I don’t think this is unreasonable. Marriott made a mistake, they honored the mistake even though people knew it was a mistake, and now they are playing dirty too. In any case it’s not unreasonable to expect someone that was in such a hurry to book this to have made plans to get to and from the hotel. I know I would be booking everything at the same – the earlier you book, the better the availability of options, and the better the pricing.