American Airlines Group is earning a profit, albeit less than the minimum CEO Doug Parker promised they’d ever see. Whether or not they’ll ever lose money again though hinges on the success of their frequent flyer program — and whether they can recognize they aren’t offering a flight product that customers want to pay a premium for.
A 23 year old student called in a hoax bomb threat against easyJet flight 4319 from Lyon to Rennes in France last Friday January 18th. Apparently his parents were on board and he didn’t want them to visit.
As the country has fallen apart, with mass shortages, rampant crime, and inflation over 5000%, American Airlines had found their Venezuela routes extremely profitable — because there was so little air service left.
Thanks to price controls on domestic flights, passengers waited at airports for days hoping to get on a flight. The National Guard pulls suitcases off of flights to loot them. Airlines complain they’re getting contaminated fuel.
With flight crews getting robbed by bandits airlines fly crews out of the country to overnight, and try to refuel elsewhere as well.
When Starwood picked up Le Meridien hotels they integrated most properties into Starwood Preferred Guest but the Parker Meridien properties in New York and Palm Springs were noticeably absent (presumably not wanting to pay the 5% fee).
During the depths of the Great Recession though they realized they needed the marketing muscle and joined the program in late 2008. They allegedly began stealing from Starwood Preferred Guest almost immediately.
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Two weeks ago I reported that American would launch award redemption for premium economy this month. Awards go live tomorrow (Thursday, January 24).
We will not see any change to upgrades at this time, or upgrade awards for premium economy. This new redemption option will be for American miles on American flights only — they will not enable redemption of premium economy seats on partners, and American’s partners won’t have access to premium economy awards either.
On Tuesday Representative Rodney Davis (R-IL) was confronted by a passenger on a Chicago – DC flight over his flying in first class during the government shutdown.
The issue here is that it may look unseemly for a member of Congress to appear to be ‘living well’ (how much of the country sees domestic first class) during the government shutdown. Indeed it’s popular to suggest that Members of Congress shouldn’t be paid while the government is shut down. I disagree.
Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson comes off as out of touch with his customers’ concerns when he claims frustrations with their loyalty program are just ‘noise around the edges’ but that hardly seems to be a one-off example.
He gave a rather bizarre interview to CNBC at the Davos World Economic Forum where he floated the idea of recession being a good thing ‘to get it over with’ and suggested that Marriott was storing the customer passport numbers that were hacked to help customers.
She was attempting to fly from London Gatwick to Dublin aboard Aer Lingus flight EI233 on Monday. She says an airline employee was starting at her, but the employee complained to the captain claiming Banks made threats.
Ultimately she says being “singled out by the haggard old white ladies” keeps happening to her — she was caught on video melting down after a Delta flight in 2015 – because of “the long weave and the Louboutins” and she stands out.
A flight attendant has decided to be a toilet paper roll racing team of one as he walks up the aisle.
At least I’m going to assume that the flight attendant did this willingly and wasn’t the victim of a joke by other members of the crew. Passengers, definitely don’t try this inflight because you don’t know how your crewmember will take it, and you could find law enforcement waiting for you when you land (if they can figure out who the perpetrator was among a plane full of passengers).
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 »
