Monthly Archives

Monthly Archives for January 2018.

Uber CEO: Tip More to Get a Better Rating

by Gary Leff

phone with uber on it
Jan 24 2018

Until now Uber has insisted that your decision to tip – and how much – cannot affect the rating you’re given by drivers. Drivers have to rate you first before they know what tip decision you’ve made.

Tipping wasn’t even a part of Uber until recently. The idea was ‘the price is the price’ and indeed at the outset they contended that the tip was included. However in their quest to redeem their image, in part by accommodating drivers, Uber added tipping inside the app. At least Uber’s tipping has become cashless.

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Delta Eats Crow, Partially Restores Interline Agreement With American Airlines

by Gary Leff

delta plane runway
Jan 24 2018

Two years ago Delta and American eliminated their interline agreement the most basic level of airline cooperation. That’s the agreement necessary to allow flights on the two airlines to exist on the same time, and that’s necessary for one airline to put its distressed passengers on the other carrier — without literally walking over with a credit card to buy a passenger a ticket.

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United’s President Just Gave an Economics Lecture to Investors About the Airline’s Future

by Gary Leff

Jan 23 2018

As a general matter I think any airline whose operations are being run by Scott Kirby is going to get worse not better for customers in terms of passenger experience. At the same time there’s no one in the industry I’d rather listen to because he’s earnest and thoughtful and lays out more clearly than anyone else his belief about how his business, and the broader industry, works.

He walked through airline economics, United’s positioning, and marginal analysis with a primary goal of convincing investors it is okay for United to grow.

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Changes Coming to United Basic Economy Like Paid Seat Assignments and Buy Ups

by Gary Leff

airport boarding
Jan 23 2018

The point of ‘Basic Economy’ fares — which don’t let you assign seats in advance, upgrade, or make changes for a fee, and at United and American don’t allow you to bring a full-sized carry on onto the plane — is to make the travel experience so unpleasant you don’t want the fare, and will spend more to avoid the restrictions.

The risk is that customers don’t spend more with the airline offering the inferior Basic Economy product, but instead book a different airline instead (or even just decide not to travel). That’s what happened when United launched their basic economy product. They lost business. And they lost about a hundred million dollars.

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Internal Document Shows When American Airlines Will Have Fast Wifi

by Gary Leff

american airline plane
Jan 23 2018

In the middle of last year American started flying its first plane with high speed satellite internet. I lucked into flying the aircraft at the beginning of November, and internet worked though I was surprised it wasn’t faster. I know what Gogo’s 2ku service can do unthrottled and I wasn’t getting anything like those speeds.

I flew American’s inaugural 737 MAX flight at the end of November and the ViaSat satellite internet didn’t work well.

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BOOK NOW: American Airlines Transatlantic Business Class Award Space

by Gary Leff

airplane first class
Jan 23 2018

American Airlines has been uniquely stingy making award space available on its own flights. I value American miles, but really just because I can book awards on partners like Cathay Pacific and Etihad.

Over the past few years there have been availability ‘dumps’. There will be a day or two or sometimes just a few hours where tons of international business class award space opens up on American flights. We haven’t seen that in many months, but are seeing it again right now.

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Court Takes Airline NIKI Away from British Airways, Gives it to Race Driver Niki Lauda

by Gary Leff

Jan 23 2018

NIKI was driven into insolvency with the collapse of air berlin and withdrawl of support from Etihad. It was expected that the Austrian carrier would go to Lufthansa (specifically their low cost subsidiary Eurowings), but European competition regulators shut down that possibility.

Ultimately British Airways parent IAG was left as the lone remaining company seeking to negotiate a purchase of assets.

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