Airline’s New Business Plan: Wishing for a Pony and New Japanese Hotel Run By Robots

by Gary Leff

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News and notes from around the interweb:

  • Alitalia’s board has approved a new business plan to reduce costs (including 2000 layoffs and 30% cuts to pilot salaries) while increasing revenue and distributing a pony to each shareholder. They still must present this plan to the government and get labor unions to agree, with new funding for the carrier conditioned on interminable strikes acceptance.

    They plan to trim their Airbus A320 fleet from 78 planes down to 20, add seats, and start imposing new fees on short- and medium-haul flights. They plan to increase flying from Milan Linate (which to date the government hasn’t permitted) and add new transaltantic destinations (which their joint venture with Delta and Air France hasn’t permitted). Everyone click your heels together 3 times…


    Copyright: uskarp / 123RF Stock Photo

  • Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles used to offer address options for ‘North Cyprus’ and ‘South Cyprus’ since Turkey claims control over the North of the country, the dispute over Cyprus having been a sticking point in Turkey’s attempted past entry into the European Union. Claiming sovereignty over an EU member state kind of gets in that way of that.

    Under the post-coup Erdoğan government, the airline and everything else in the country has been increasingly politicized. Hence renaming the Istanbul business class lounge the “July 15 Heroes of Democracy Lounge.”

    Now it appears that Miles & Smiles has replaced ‘North Cyprus’ with Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and has removed the option of South Cyprus entirely. One member from Cyprus reports “I am being told by [Turkish] that my address details are incomplete and no valid member address exists for me.”

  • How To Check Your Credit Card Application Status With Each Issuer

  • What’s grosser than gross on a Delta flight? (HT: Rene’s Points

  • New hotel run by robots opens outside Tokyo (HT: Alan H.)

  • The single purpose lobbying entity for Delta, American, and United meant to spur protectionism against Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar (the Orwellianally-named “Partnership for Fair and Open Skies” which wants to place limits on Open Skies treaties initiated and signed by the U.S.) took out a full page ad in the New York Times calling out Emirates for launching a new Newark – Athens flight and calling on the President to protect American jobs (HT: Chase). This is both idiotic and hypocritical grandstanding.

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

  2. I think you mean that Alitalia wants to reduce their narrowbody fleet BY 20 planes, not TO 20 planes

  3. i think i have same opinion with my friend in upstair, “I think you mean that Alitalia wants to reduce their narrowbody fleet BY 20 planes, not TO 20 planes” but, thanks for the great sharing information bro..

  4. Thanks for publicizing that ad. #SAD

    At lunch yesterday we were discussing 2017 travel destinations, and mentioned that finally Athens will be more reasonably-priced for New York area passengers thanks to real competition. #GLAD

  5. Let’s see, for profit enterprises are “idiotic” for opposing competition from heavily-subsidized foreign-government-owned enterprises that costs them money? I know you oppose those efforts — for reasons that seem heavily influenced by the fact that hugely benefit from these subsidized services. But your opponents are “idiotic”? Wow. I wouldn’t call you “idiotic” for advancing your self-interest. I would say your statements seem hypocritical, though.

  6. @iahphx THEY aren’t idiotic for doing it (if they can get the government to give them consumer money that’s great for them), the ARGUMENTS they’re making are idiotic. And if you think I make the consistent case on this that I do because I ‘hugely benefit from these subsidized services’ you fail the ideological turing test.

Comments are closed.