Monthly Archives for February 2020.
American Airlines has a new internal video for employees explaining that cramming more seats onto planes is good for business and good for customers too. Vasu Raja, the airline’s Senior Vice President of Network Strategy, says that densifying “both for our customers, for our team, and for the future of american airlines that’s an amazing thing.”
There are four basic arguments American makes. I don’t think they hold up well to scrutiny.
American and Alaska are partners again. The previously-announced March 1 breakup isn’t happening. Alaska Airlines is joining oneworld. And American will fly from Seattle to Bangalore, India (and Seattle – London).
United’s CFO left two years ago, put together $125 million in capital, and bought tiny XTRA Airways which had just one old Boeing 737-400 left but which had something a lot more valuable: an operating certificate. They’re already allowed to fly scheduled service.
Their first Boeing 737-800 arrives next week.
Emirates offers a great product. They have some interesting airline partnerships. And they serve a number of U.S. gateways. To make a U.S. co-brand attractive they could take a lesson from the Chase British Airways card and offer a statement credit towards taxes and fees on redemptions each year, as well as offer fast mileage-earning and progress towards elite status along with upgrades on the airline.
Boeing projected recently that re-certifying the 737 MAX will take until summer. Once it gets government approvals airlines still have to bring planes out of storage and prepare them for service, and they have to train pilots on new procedures – which will take time in part because of a limited number of available simulators.
And yet American Airlines and other carriers have the plane scheduled back into service in June. CEO Doug Parker updated employees on progress bringing the 737 MAX back into service during last week’s Crew News monthly question and answer session.
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.
An American Airlines flight attendant asked a community of frequent flyers about the value of ‘thank you notes’ written to passengers. Unanimously everyone loved the idea. But the flight attendant reported that several passengers just tossed their notes.
I wonder if this is something that people love in theory but don’t actually appreciate in practice?
Annual category changes are pushing up prices at 117 Hyatt hotels, and 100 go down. Out of these 217 properties changing category 65 are SLH hotels.
Meanwhile Hyatt is adding 48 new SLH hotels to their portfolio, introducing variable pricing for cash and price awards, and implementing new peak and off peak award pricing. All of this goes into effect March 22.
American Airlines is the only remaining U.S. airline the claims to offer international first class. The top cabin on both United and Delta is business class. However there’s good reason to think American Airlines may eliminate the product, too. And there are clues in the new business class seat focus groups that support this conclusion.
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.
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 »
