Monthly Archives for July 2024.
An evangelical pastor attacked his wife on Alaska Airlines because she was upgraded, and he wasn’t.
The pair were traveling on Alaska flight 275 from Seattle to Anchorage on Tuesday of last week. Seventy five year old Roger Allan Holmberg Sr. “flipped [his wife] the bird” on board the aircraft and assaulted her upon discovering that she has Mileage Plan elite status.
Data from Aviation analytics company Cirium shows that American Airlines offers the most seats of any airline this summer. Using schedule data for this month, they edge out Southwest Airlines as the largest carrier by the measure. Both American and Southwest have a heavily domestic-focused network, and don’t fly their seats as far as United Airlines (or Delta).
Overall domestic scheduled seats are up 6% year-over-year despite aircraft delivery delays, especially by Boeing. Seats are up 7.8% across the Atlantic this month with Delta just a hair’s breadth behind United Airlines.
Delta Air Lines and Riyadh Air, which launches next year, have signed a partnership agreement “to expand connectivity and premium travel options across North America, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and beyond.” This will enable Delta to launch service to Riyadh (!).
You can drink while ‘walking around’ or, I suppose, while rocking in a rocking chair. And you’re then more likely to bring that booze on board and serve yourself.
The best proposals here are for new routes – from Alaska (San Diego), American (San Antonio), and Spirit (San Jose). Breeze says if they were eligible they’d fly somewhere like Boise, Reno, or Albuquerque which are at least places that lack service today. But because Congress got involved micro-managing this based on lobbying on the one hand, and their own political interest on the other, it’s not clear who the FAA can even legally consider for the slots.
Nearly 400 SLH hotels are now online with the Hilton Honors partnership, so that you earn in the Hilton program on paid rates and can redeem your points for stays at their portfolio of luxury hotels. This gives Hilton a huge edge in luxury redemptions – making their points more alluring, even if not super high value.
If there was doubt change at the airline was necessary, there’d be a role for Elliott Capital. If Elliott Capital had a vision for how to fix things, there might be as well. Here they just make the case that change is necessary, and ask for their people to be put in charge saying they’ll figure out what the plan is later.
So when they say they’ll “move expeditiously to give shareholders a direct say on the necessary leadership changes” they’re planning a proxy fight, putting their board members in place. But towards what end, besides firing current board members they replace as well as the CEO? The problem here is the lack of a solution!
A passenger on Air China flight 2754 from Quzhou to Chengdu on Thursday opened an emergency exit door on the Airbus A319 – mistaking it for the door to the toilet. The emergency slide deployed, passengers headed down the slide, and the flight was cancelled.
United Airlines flight 1001 from Los Angeles to Denver lost a tire during takeoff this morning at around 7:15 a.m. Pacific time. The pilot reportedly announced what happened to passengers on board as they continued their flight to Denver as planned. Flight attendants ran everyone through brace procedures, prior to making an emergency landing.
A former secret service member and “highly decorated military veteran” says he’s lost his career because JetBlue banned him after informing flight attendants that he was (lawfully) carrying a firearm with him on his flight to Florida.
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 »
