A cat got loose in first class on a Delta flight this weekend. The flight attendant up front was not amused. And it took a surprisingly long time for the cat’s owner, with noise cancelling headphones on, to come up and claim her kitty.
When we talk about airlines mistreating their employees, we usually think about allegations of how oneworld member and American Airlines partner Qatar Airways’ flight attendants are treated.
It’s rare that we’d even entertain the notion of pilots being treated as anything less than Skygods — in some measure we had US Airways acquire American Airlines because American’s pilots decided that they wouldn’t work with CEO Tom Horton; he had to go. At Kuwait Airways it was literally two years after a pilot invited a porn star to take the controls that the pilot was even suspended.
Now that American and US Airways have combined reservation systems so that they’re a single airline from a passenger perspective, I’ve written that what they absolutely must do is have a common product. That means introducing ‘Main Cabin Extra’ extra legroom seating into the legacy US Airways fleet.
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.
Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean actor Orlando Bloom, invited to India by the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (the head of government for the Northern Indian state), was deported on arrival in Delhi from London.
He made the trip to India, arriving on Saturday to promote tourism, but discovered that his e-visa which was applied for November 30 had been rejected.
While passenger airline deregulation is controversial (since so many of us fly), air cargo deregulation which happened about the same time is far less so.
Scott Mayerowitz spent one night in Louisville (doesn’t have quite the ring as One Night in Bangkok) to see how UPS sorts up to 4 million packages a night off one plane and onto another. Amazon isn’t quite as impressed.
It started with predeparture beverages, and followed with flight attendants expressing their frustrations with customers.
Delta, American, and United think it’s unfair they should have to compete against the better Gulf airlines because of subsidies (though they’re plenty subsidized themselves). Nevermind that US airlines account for 49% of world airline profits. Nevertheless, good service isn’t expensive, and most US airlines will even complain they spend more on labor than their competitors.
Southwest Airlines suspended 105 ground workers for between 45 and 90 days. Their union, the Transport Workers Union, says Southwest did it to punish them for attending union meetings.
Naturally, the truth is far more complicated than that and paints a far bleaker picture of what the workers did — and relations between Southwest and the TWU (as well as many of their other unions).
When I was a kid I knew that “whether you’re going to heaven or hell, you’ll have to connect in Atlanta.”
It wasn’t until 1971 though that the airport got its first international flights (Mexico and Jamaica on Eastern Airlines). The first non-US airline to fly to Atlanta was Sabena in 1978.
It’s the ideally-located major city for connections throughout the Southeast. United basically cedes this entire region. American didn’t serve it well from Miami. The closest competitor was US Airways, now part of American, in Charlotte.
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.
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 »
