News and notes from around the interweb:
- Airlines benefit when miles are redeemed for unsold seats
- Study suggests light therapy can solve jet lag. (HT: @spencerformiles) Here’s how I beat jet lag.
- Ryanair is scaling back operations in Italy over an increase in passenger taxes
- With airlines around the world facing labor agitating for higher wages in light of profits, low fuel prices, and a history of givebacks, struggling airberlin is getting pay cuts from managers and pilots.
- Will climate change make Westbound transatlantic flights longer?
- How visas shape the geopolitical architecture of the planet (HT: Marginal Revolution) “Based on the visa status of all countries, community detection reveals the existence of 4 + 1 main communities..”
- An interview with Ben Baldanza the Spirit Airlines CEO who was ousted last month.
- Aeroplan is offering double miles on the new Air Canada Vancouver – Brisbane route. I’m just interested in there being another Star Alliance non-stop flight between North America and Australia to check for awards!
Interesting link on the “good business sense” piece. However, it’s a little simple to look at accrued liabilities and think BAD. For one thing, most investors are sufficiently sophisticated to realize that frequent flyer liabilities are actually just deferred revenue and don’t represent future outlays of cash. The cash has already been brought into the firm at the time of the original ticket sale or the sale of points/miles to a program partner (e.g. bank).
In fact, if the program has any sort of expiration or other breakage-inducing structure, preventing the redemption of those miles can be helpful as it allows the airline to recognize more of the revenue up-front at the time of the original sale.
Of course, counteracting this is the benefits the airline receives by providing its loyal customers with coveted award space, presumably to entice future loyalty. However, glancing at the load factors for Air New Zealand (85% as of December), the airline seems to be doing a pretty decent job of filling its planes as-is.
That’s a 787 from BNE to YVR. What’s Air Canada’s business class like?
I saw this AC route several months ago when searching for awards US-AU and even reserved it while the UA site would allow free 24 hour holds so not sure how new it is as far as being able to be booked.
The climate change piece is typical in that the theory isn’t well thought out. Tailwind and headwind speed would be equal in each direction. Its like saying there is a hill but it’s steeper going up than down because it is growing.