American Admirals Clubs Are Rolling Out Bagel and Waffle Bars — While Passengers Post Photos of Dirty Cabins [Roundup]

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • Bagel and waffle bars in the mornings at American Airlines Admirals Clubs.

  • The WiFi signal does connect you ‘out’, though.

  • Disgusting. American Airlines, clean your planes.

  • Two hills I will die on: (1) a passenger should buy the space that they need on a flight, and (2) if you don’t receive the entire seat you paid for you are owed compensation – and rules that say otherwise are an abomination.

  • Conventional wisdom is that Southwest has given up its unique brand, and made itself just like all the other airlines – such an odd strategy to seek financial outperformance by becoming more like American and JetBlue.

    But that’s wrong, because other airlines will generally allow passengers to move into empty seats to spread out as long as it’s in the same cabin – not from regular coach to extra legroom, but from an exit row aisle to an exit window, for instance, or from the last row middle to the row ahead window. Not Southwest! With Southwest having moved to assigned and paid seats, assengers get scolded, warned, threatened as part of the airline’s new revenue-protection strategy. Sad.

    majority of seats empty on red eye, still have to sit at the back
    by
    u/FancyButterfly3945 in
    SouthwestAirlines

  • Bozeman, Montana airport RFP for a new common use lounge it would be 8,000 square feet and they’re open to airlines, credit cards or Priority Pass-linked lounges as long as there is a pay-in option.

  • In addition to a new Delta Sky Club, Tampa airport will have a Common Use Lounge at Airside D and at Airside C. Submissions are due in June and a decision on who will operate the lounge is expected September 3.

  • Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse London Heathrow refurbishment

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. Look, I love bread. Any corporation that rolls out bagels is trying to cut costs to the bone. I literally cannot think of a single exception.

    Bagels are a sign of “we only do this because it’s required, otherwise we wouldn’t. Enjoy, peasants!”

  2. PM AA deep cleaned planes every 30 days. Not sure what the practice is now. Generally, I don’t go looking for dirt because I know I will find it. I don’t think superficial cleaning is limited to AA.

  3. Food in the Admirals Clubs is pretty decent these days. I think it’s approaching the point where there’s really not much difference between an Admirals Club and a SkyClub. Breakfasts are good lately – had a bacon, egg and cheese dumpling the other week that hit the spot. Lunch always has a fresh kale salad. Enjoyed a vegan mushroom broth they had as well which came with its own toppings bar – never thought I’d see anything like that with American. Gate-to-gate wifi is just working notwithstanding the typo. So easy to pick on AA (and so much room for improvement…) but one could take a view that they are meaningfully investing in the soft product and hard product. If they could actually maintain their planes better and run a better operation, they could actually have something here.

  4. Baby steps. When you’re that fracked up you can’t fix it all at once. Baby steps.

    (Hopefully)

  5. The whole travel industry seems to be slipping into a state of “second best” here in America, which is sad. It used to be one of the industries that really contributed to America being a special place. Today, states are embroiled in cutthroat politics of the worst kind, and they are not paying attention to bringing in business travelers and vacation visitors. This is being compounded by our national leaders acting in a very hostile manor toward other countries, which is extremely, extremely foolish. This is going to cost some travel-oriented states tremendous losses of revenue and investment.

  6. Depends on the Admirals Club, and the time of day; the guac stations aren’t bad; the chicken cacciatori at LGA is great. If only they could all be like Greenwich, Soho, and Chelsea at JFK T8.

  7. Regarding the new Southwest seat assignment policy.
    I fully support not being able to move from any assigned seat that someone hasn’t paid for into the extra legroom rows
    When I’m paying for extra space I don’t want others cramming into my row that didn’t pay for the extra space.On one flight I had an emotional support animal stuffed into the middle seat and its owner.While I liked both of them they didn’t pay for the premium seating
    I do somewhat object to Southwest’s unusually high pricing on those extra legroom seats but I also pay it when I wish to and just fly them less typically and fly where I hold status and don’t pay for all the add ons

  8. Remind me again why American’s Board loves Isom? It can’t be because shareholders, customers, or employees think well of him and it’s painfully obvious that like the rest of the ULCC-mentality crowd he’s badly out of his depth at a full service airline so there’s got to be something I’m missing.

  9. At the CLT Admirals Club, where smoked salmon has heroically surrendered its spot to waffles, the age-old question arises: for proper table etiquette, do you boldly stack a waffle on a bagel, or go full renegade and plop a bagel on a waffle?

Comments are closed.