In December I wrote that Delta has added basic economy restrictions to the lowest award prices for some routes. This was limited to just a few cities.
Now the travesty has spread.
I’ve been a huge critic of the American Airlines “Project Oasis” to take their existing Boeing 737s and replace interiors with more seats; less comfortable seats; less distance between seats; less recline; no seat back video; and smaller lavatories (plus bigger overhead bins).
However it seems there’s now a whole new problem with this project.
In this crazy video two employees are fighting. We don’t know when the video was taken, although it was posted to Facebook yesterday. It’s happening in the Caribbean — I think St. Croix, though I haven’t been since a US Airways mistake fare brought me in 2007 — and one of the employees is wearing an American Airlines vest.
We can only speculate what started the fight — but usually it’s passengers that are melting down. Right now though flight attendants (who are just entering contract negotiations) and mechanics (who haven’t yet gotten a new contract from the merged airline) seem to hate American. That apparently leaves other employees and contractors to hate each other.
Southwest Airlines is known for the personality of its flight attendants, and the way they lyricize their safety briefing often goes viral in social media. It really shows their corporate culture of fun.
United’s flight attendants will be permitted to show their personality when making in-flight announcements starting April 1.
T-Mobile and Sprint executives didn’t stay much at the Trump Hotel in DC before they announced the merger but as soon as the deal was announced their spending ramped up to 14% of their total DC hotel spend.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Amazon decided to split up its proposed “HQ2” facility between New York and Northern Virginia, promising about 25,000 jobs for each. New York politicians chased Amazon out of their New York plan.
The payments that Amazon will get for their Northern Virginia headquarters (in addition to tax reductions) are many and varied, coming from all levels of government. Arlington, Virginia will direct a portion of its hotel tax to Amazon.
American Airlines seemingly spends an awful lot of time talking to employees about my blog posts whether it’s Vasu Raja responding to what I write about New York JFK or Doug Parker getting defensive about the 737 MAX.
The airline is clear in its financials though that they lose money flying planes and all their profit is accounted for by the sale of frequent flyer miles. American is telling their employees not to worry though despite the way “some online commenters have tried to oversimplify” the airline’s financial results.
In October Qatar Airways threatened to leave the oneworld alliance, a threat that their CEO Akbar al-Baker has repeated several times.
Qatar Airways CEO Akbar al-Baker was asked about his plans to stay or leave oneworld and he’s indicated that they’ll announce a decision in a month or two.
Qatar Airways CEO Akbar al-Baker promised a “revolutionary” economy seat. And that would be hard to do for an airline whose CEO has already claimed in the past that they don’t need to offer premium economy — because their economy product is already premium economy.
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 »
