Keeping with their tradition, Volunteer Airport Ambassadors at Florida’s Jacksonville International Airport will have about 1000 carnations to hand out to moms passing through the airport on Mother’s Day.

At Miami International Airport they’re celebrating Mother’s Day Friday through Sunday with discounts, gifts-with-purchase and freebies in the shops, foil-wrapped chocolate roses for moms and events that include live music, a pick-a-pearl game with real oysters and a chance to make last-minute Mother’s Day cards and photo postcards.
(Find the coupons and event locations here.)

At Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway Airports, food and retail concessions posting the sign above will be handing out free flower seed packets (zinnias) to moms from Friday, May 11 through Sunday, May 13, 2012. (While supplies last).

There are also special Mother’s Day sales and gift-with-purchase offers going on at Philadelphia International Airport , at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, at the Swatch stores in JFK International Airport, Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport and at Boston’s Logan Airport.

Frontier Airlines, which adopted Midwest Airline’s sweet-smelling tradition of serving complimentary warm chocolate chip cookies to all passengers, has decided to nix that amenity at the end of April. The reason: “offering a free perishable snack did not align with our low-cost business model,” said an airline spokesperson.

What will be served instead? Elite frequent fliers – and anyone who has paid a fare above economy class – will get complimentary packaged goldfish crackers or animal crackers. Hungry economy class passengers can snack on those items as well – if they’re willing to pay $1 a package.

Another change in the pipeline: Allegiant Air – which already charges a per-segment website booking fee and adds charges for seat assignments, beverages, priority boarding, and other services – plans to begin charging $35 for each carry-on bag as of Wednesday. The new fee hadn’t been added to this long list of fees as of early Tuesday morning, but airline spokespeople have confirmed the new fee to various news outlets.

Going to New Orleans?

If your trip begins on a Friday, you’re in luck.

Since September, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport has been hosting “Throw me something, Fridays” and offering free Mardi Gras beads to arriving passengers.

250-300 pounds of beads are handed out on an average Friday and on the Friday before Mardi Gras airport staff handed out 1100 pounds of beads – along with stuffed animals, balsa wood airplanes, luggage tags and other “Welcome to New Orleans” treats.

Reed Barnes, the airport’s customer service manager, told me that the purple, green and gold beads are handed, not thrown, to travelers from 5 a.m. until 9 p.m. each Friday and that “No one has to lift their shirts” in order to get some beads. “Although,” said Barnes, “a lot of guys offer.”

As airport amenities go, free Mardi Gras beads are a nice touch. Especially because the airport buys recycled beads that have been cleaned and bundled by employees from a local charitable organization.

The event is part of the airport’s Black History Month celebration and the local high school students competing will be judged by  a panel that includes Nikki Giovanni, a well-known poet and a New York Times Bestsellers List author; Amy Young, poet laureate from Alexandria, Va.; and Vincent Young, published author, artist and Airports Authority employee.

Following the Poetry Slam, Nikki Giovanni will read selections from her works and answer questions from the audience. A real treat!

Airport marketing manager Stephanie Gehman browsed through the more than 30,000 free titles offered by Project Gutenburg and picked out 15 ebooks for the MDT library. Passengers – or anybody – can download the books, which include classics and aviation-related titles, at www.flyHIA.com/ebooks.

What’s on the shelf?  The Adventures of Huck Finn, Aeroplanes, Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Around the World in 80 Days, Gulliver’s Travels, Little Women, Mother Goose, Oliver Twist, Opportunities in Aviation, Pride and Prejudice, Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, The Early History of the Airplane, The First Airplane Diesel Engine, and Wuthering Heights.

The ebooks are available for multiple formats directly from the website or by scanning any of the 15 different signs posted in gate areas and in a few other locations in the MDT terminal.

“The signs have a QR code that links directly to one of the fifteen titles in the ebook library,” said Gehman.  “Passengers can wander around the terminal, scan all of the signs and collect all fifteen titles.”

And what about the shops that sell books at the airports?

MDT has two Hudson News locations that sell books, “But we selected ebook titles that aren’t for sale at the booksellers in the terminal,” said Gehman.

At Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, there will be fresh, handmade, chocolate covered strawberries from local favorite Amy’s Ice Creams for sale in the baggage claim areas from February 12-14th.

In Ohio, the Akron-Canton Airport has decided that Valentine’s Day should be a customer appreciation day and so they’ll be celebrating there with free free Caribou coffee and Cinnabon minis in the morning and complimentary cupcakes in the afternoon.

The American Red Cross will be on hand to demonstrate CPR techniques (protecting hearts – get it?) and there will be prize drawings all day long. In addition to prizes from hotels, rental car agency, the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the Akron Aeros, one lucky duck will win a $500 gift card on Frontier Airlines.

And although I don’t have official confirmation yet, it’s a good bet that the ambassadors at Florida’s Jacksonville International Airport will continue their tradition of giving a complimentary carnation to about 1500 arriving passengers.

This week the airline announced that, beginning February 1, main cabin passengers on many international flights will once again be served complimentary beer and wine, a practice discontinued some time ago.

Here’s the deal:

“Customers traveling on American-operated flights between the U.S. and Europe, the U.S. and Asia and / or onboard long-haul flights between the U.S. and Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay can choose from a variety of complimentary beer and wine options, in addition to the full selection of nonalcoholic beverages.”

What’s next? Complimentary pillows and blankets?

But probably because this is the hectic holiday travel season, I’ve answered questions posed by Travelocity’s Roaming Gnome, Travergence, Rudy Maxa’s radio show (the podcast should be posted shortly) and, now, the Moodie Report’s Foodie Report. (Go to pages 24 & 25 to hear the audio clips, or read the story below.)

But they weren’t joking: as I entered the terminal there was indeed someone standing there greeting everyone getting off the plane and handing out free cookies from a little wicker basket.

Turns out they’ve been doing this for more than 10 years. And, so far, volunteers at the airport have handed out more than a million complimentary, locally-baked cookies.

Those volunteers need some off. So most days there’s been no one on duty handing out cookies after 8:30 pm.

Until now.

Airport officials were getting complaints from cookie-loving passengers who arrived at the airport too late to get a snack. So to make sure no one leaves the airport hungry and disappointed, the airport now has a self-serve cookie kiosk.

Thursday evening LAN airlines kicked off a campaign to promote its South American destinations in a really fun way: it surprised about 200 people dining at Nuela restaurant in New York City  with vouchers for free roundtrip tickets to destinations in Ecuador, Peru, Chile, or Argentina.

Lucky them!

And, maybe, lucky you.

Through October 31, the airline will be giving away more tickets to South America via a Twitter contest.

Here’s how to enter