News and notes from around the interweb:
- Cranky Flier explains the hard line American Airlines is taking with smaller corporate contracts and agents it’s a hard line bet against traditional business travel. Managed travel is down and will remain down.
the 6-day a week road warrior doesn’t exist. People say we’re at 80 percent today; they are waiting for the last 20 percent to come back. I would challenge that notion. If people are walking around and they look, the contract with the employees in the workplace has changed
- Baltimore airport gym added to Priority Pass showers!
- Ukraine Detains 2 Over Destruction of World’s Largest Plane AN-225 Mriya
- Plans to Build AirTrain to La Guardia Are Officially Scrapped (NYT)
They planned to do what was easiest not what was best so they could say they’d done it. Both the limited ambition and that nothing else could be done points to a bigger problem with U.S. infrastructure .. which didn’t begin to be solved by 2021 legislation .. but might have been improved somewhat by NEPA reform that Senator Manchin extracted a commitment for but Republicans killed to avoid giving Dems a win on one of ‘their’ issues. [A lawsuit literally claimed that the environmental review had to have been incomplete because it only took two years.]
- PGA golfer picks up seven figure win, flies home American Airlines coach in fairness buying up to first is often not worth it, now that there’s less legroom in the airline’s new domestic product and the food certainly isn’t worth the spend.
#21C pic.twitter.com/FBasyDPk8o
— Tom Hoge (@HogeGolf) March 13, 2023
- Legendary Silicon Valley VC justifies bank bailouts because.. airlines got bailouts. The negative consequences of that mistake just do not stop.
In 2020, major airlines received bailouts that also protected EQUITY holders (never considered w/ SVB). As many have noted, years of buy-backs depleted the cash that could have been used as a rainy-day fund. So arguable this was also poor risk mgmt.https://t.co/Hynp7l8C5T
— Bill Gurley (@bgurley) March 14, 2023
The failure of SVB was precipitated by VCs advising their portfolio companies to move their deposits from SVB. Then, they sign a joint letter in support of SVB? Why am I not convinced?
Whatever AA does is almost always the wrong bet. I doubt we see UA/DL follow especially now that UA reported weaker demand.
@Gary, more to indicate we are watching the demise of CK, IMO.
Which BTW, doesn’t mean they’re wrong. I just don’t see too many business travellers internationally.
The term “road warrior” is funny. Especially if used domestically
It glorifies a sad lifestyle where one flies on regional jets and stays at holiday inns doing the bidding of their corporate overlords without the ability to go home to their families at night.
You’re not a warrior of any kind. At best a corporate drone.
AA continues down the AmericaWest path. It is following the lead of the LCCs, which is what they seek to be, domestically.
Their domestic product doesn’t distinguish them and who wants to connect on a domestic aircraft that could be flying for Frontier
@Paul Southwest is the most profitable US airline and stays off the GDS. It wouldnt hurt AA to streamline some of its operations and cut costs. The cost of using a travel agent/service is going to be shifted to the end user instead of the airline. They will lose some business, but they will also cut cost and complexity from their business.
I am not sure I understand the impact of this, but I wonder if they concluded that they weren’t really a player for large corporate contracts, so not worth trying. UA seems to dominate that in the US. As to agencies, those seem like a shrinking business. I haven’t used one in decades.