Monthly Archives for June 2017.
A bulkhead first class passenger on Thursday night’s Alaska Airlines flight AS755 from Seattle to Anchorage was removed from the aircraft at gunpoint on arrival in Alaska.
I care about my American Airlines Executive Platinum status far less than I used to. Airlines want customers to buy the product they want to fly on each trip, but that means flyers will buy it from whomever has the best schedule and price on that trip. I used to go to AA.com whenever I needed to travel, and buy the ticket American was offering. Now I fly a mix of American, United, Delta, Southwest, Virgin America and Alaska. And I’m not alone.
They’ve paid down significant debt, and they have similar future obligation commitments in line with Delta and far below American (largely because of American’s huge aircraft orders the last several years and into the future, but also because of low pension obligations — remember United moved a bunch of this liability onto the federal government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in bankruptcy while legacy American Airlines did not).
Here’s the United fleet plan he laid out, showing that the airline should end 2017 with the same number of aircraft as 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.
Virgin Atlantic has launched a formal status match program. If you have elite status with another airline (but explicitly not Delta, which is 49% owner of Virgin Atlantic) and a future flight booked they’ll give you 12 months of elite status as a match to your current level.
The Mile High Club is 100 years old. The very first couple to try it were using a Curtiss Flying Boat C‑2 off Long Island. The woman was cheating on her husband who was serving abroad in World War I. They managed to disengage the autopilot while engaged in their congress, sending the plane into the water. They were found naked by duck hunters.
Marlin Jackson was onboard a Delta flight from Atlanta to San Diego on Sunday, sitting in a window seat on the left side of the aircraft. The passenger in the middle seat in his row was traveling with an emotional support animal — a dog weighing about 50 pounds. The dog was sitting in the passenger’s lap.
A woman who was six months’ pregnant says she was kicked off an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Mexico City yesterday. Initially she understood she was being removed for questioning her flight’s delay.
However she was then told it was taking a photograph and that “according to FAA it’s illegal to take photos of the crew members inside the flight.”
The biggest mistake the average member of a frequent flyer program makes when it comes to using their miles for travel is believing that you just go to your airline’s website, enter the city you’re traveling from and where you want to go, and the website will spit out your options.
It’s also a perfectly reasonable expectation in 2017, but it’s not how it works. Different airlines do better and worse jobs at this, of course. Some don’t have all their partners online. Some won’t show all possible combinations of flights.
The President of Nigeria signed an order requiring airlines to stop manually searching passenger bags effective June 1. Bags are supposed to be searched by machines, since having your bags searched in front of you in public by another person is considered humiliating.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
