With JetBlue Partnership Winding Down, American To Take Stake In Another Northeast Airline [Roundup]

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About Gary Leff

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 »

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Comments

  1. The United passenger apparently did not know the trick with using the safety card as window shade.

  2. American was looking at investing in Connect long before the NEA collapsed. As usual Leff’s headline has little do with reality.

  3. The Spirit Airlines hamster at BWI did not go down a toilet. It flew with the passenger on the next flight that evening inside of an empty Starbucks cup with everyone looking the opposite direction on purpose.

  4. Had a bag lost on United about 15 years ago, due to irrops and weather. Went on to New York to finish my business. The people running the United baggage office at EWR told me that no one in the United baggage offices read the telexes that were sent then (equivalent of computer notes today) because they didn’t have time to do so. So all these computer notes likely go into a black hole, and merely give a kabuki-theater response to the passenger. BTW, I got my bag when I was lucky enough to be at the baggage office at EWR when the bag came down the belt after the morning flight from YYZ, where it had been.

    Airline management didn’t care then, and doesn’t care now, whether baggage gets delivered. as AC showed when the Canadian couple traced their airtagged luggage to a storage facility in Brampton, it is cheaper for the airlines to pay passengers whatever compensation they may be owed than to invest employee time to trace it.

    If management truly wanted to fix the problem, they would measure lost bags, customer satisfaction, etc., in addition to traditional sales, profitibility, cost control and other measures, and grade executives accordingly. For several years, customer satisfaction measurements were part of executive bonus compensation at Chrysler (I suspect this is long gone.) What gets measured gets done.

  5. Yep, once upon a time, customer satisfaction seemed to matter.

    Now, apparently not so much.

  6. Kerala likely has more 5* properties, but fewer 5* rooms as the big city luxury properties in Delhi/Mumbai dwarf the small boutique properties in Kerala.

  7. United Airlines lost two new SCUBA cylinders after I checked in for my flight from California to Detroit. Fortunately, United charged me an extra baggage fee for the SCUBA cylinders, making it easy to prove what I had shipped with United Airlines. United did not want to refund their baggage surcharge for the loss of my checked baggage but only for the cost of the SCUBA cylinders.
    .

  8. Inadvertently left a Filson jacket on United. Admittedly my fault, but no success in locating it by United despite my providing the seat number. Called the 800 #, often, filed claim, went back to the boarding area, went to baggage claim, with no luck. My impression was clearly that United was just waiting a few days to send a “not recovered” email although obviously someone took the jacket.

  9. Kerala five star hotel count resulted from a change in liquor licensing law by the state government wherein only five star hotels got one.

    A lot of properties upgraded their things so that they can get the liquor license to run bars.

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