Monthly Archives

Mar 05 2016

Yesterday I flew United Express from Austin to Denver. It was a Canadair CRJ-700 operated by GoJet. Katarina was working the first class cabin. She’s been flying for only a month, and has probably worked about 50 flights. She’s still finding her confidence making inflight announcements. But she hustled, and she showed real care for her passengers.

And that made me think of Jenna. United CEO Oscar Munoz, a month in to the job and before taking medical leave, was traveling the United system on something of a mystery tour. And he was telling the story of a flight attendant he had come across.

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Mar 05 2016

A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.

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Mar 05 2016

Last year a Singapore Airlines Airbus A330 retracted while the aircraft was undergoing a check. Now, a plane can land without a nose gear if it really has to.

But a plane certainly isn’t going to be able to taxi out and take off without a working nose gear. Via Aviation Herald, an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 flight ET-702 had finished boarding and was preparing for departure when “the aircraft settled on its nose after the nose gear collapsed.”

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Mar 04 2016

I used to think 500 mile upgrades made sense. I no longer do — although I still don’t believe complimentary unlimited upgrades for all elites make sense.

There’s two changes that have happened. (1) American has raised the price of 500 mile upgrades from $30 to $40 apiece. (2) The price of buying first class outright has gone done.

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Mar 04 2016

Incoming Delta President Glen Hauenstein, the key architect of the airline’s revenue-based this-and-that over the past decade (hint: Jeff Robertson was always a great cheerleader for the efforts, but not their driver), has declared the end of awards.

He told Bloomberg‘s Justin Bachman, “We want people to be able to use those miles not to fly for free but to control your experience,” says Glen Hauenstein, Delta’s incoming president and architect of the airline’s revenue plans.”

Instead of free flights he wants SkyMiles used at a penny apiece towards more spending on Delta products. And that’s the value many internally wanted to place on miles in a revenue-based redemption program.

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Mar 04 2016

A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.

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Mar 04 2016

Starwood is offering a discount of up to 25% on purchased points through April 15. Starwood points are the most valuable loyalty currency, and there’s leverage in any bonus they offer, however I don’t think this offer quite is cheap enough to justify buying.

Still, if you need to top off most any frequent flyer account this could be strategically useful.

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Mar 04 2016

Some readers are going to see this as a niche product, but it’s a great signup offer and two and a half times as big as the usual offer.

It’s from Barclaycard and there are some real gem opportunities for the miles.

There are really two ways to leverage this card: Lufthansa first class awards (and not just within 2 weeks of travel) and United domestic first class at a low mileage cost. And it now comes with lounge passes as well.

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Mar 04 2016

There are truly disgusting things in the world. Last year a family was ‘forced’ to sit in vomit on a flight to DC. A couple flying to Hawaii found a full barf bag in their seat back pocket.

Of course there’s the whole bare feet thing. Worse yet, in the lavatory. And a man was hospitalized last year in a freak airport toilet accident.

There was Three Mile Island. There was Chernobyl. And there’s that Qantas A380 flying Sydney Dallas packed full oftentimes in economy, the American Airlines Dallas – Hong Kong flight, and Delta Atlanta – Johannesburg. The lavatories at the end of those flights…

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Mar 03 2016

There are a number of ways to rank the busiest airports. You can look at total aircraft movements (takeoffs and landings). You can look at total available seats (because a whole lot of small regional jets may skew those results). Or – the most common measure – you can look at total passengers.

It was really exciting when Atlanta airport crossed 100 million passengers for the year, even if they faked the 100 millionth passenger.

Some cities like London and New York have multiple major airports in their metropolitan areas. In fact, London is the single largest passenger traffic market if you combine the region’s airports and that’s followed by New York and then Tokyo and Paris.

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