Legacy US Airways planes were heavily skewed towards lots of economy seats. US Airways didn’t sell a lot of premium seats, and when they did they sold those seats cheaply, which matched both their route network and their inflight product.
When US Airways management took over American Airlines they set out to take business class seats out of planes and add seats to lower cabins. Chief Revenue Officer Vasu Raja suggests this needs to change.
The American Airlines-JetBlue codeshares cover New York and Boston. American’s new New York – Tel Aviv and Athens routes are both served by Delta. Now Delta is retaliating against that new service by adding the same destinations from Boston.
Is Delta doing anything here other than proving that the American Airlines-JetBlue partnership spurs competition in the Northeast?
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.
Vasu Raja is American’s Chief Revenue Officer. He’s risen rapidly in the organization during the pandemic. I love listening to him because he makes bold claims about the world, sometimes not entirely backed by facts or evidence. But he’s never mealy-mouthed in his assessments.
At the start of the pandemic airlines were cancelling flights – and keeping customers’ money. The U.S. Department of Transportation generally forced U.S. airlines to provide refunds, and pursued foreign carriers too.
E.U. consumer protection, generally thought to be stronger than in the U.S., came down on the side of the customer – but couldn’t actually do anything about it. European airlines have been stealing passenger money for 18 months.
Several airlines have notified employees that the federal government will require to be vaccinated with no alternative for regular tests instead. That’s because the Biden administration has decided to treat airlines as federal contractors, and subject to their order that government contractors must have 100% vaccination among employees, rather than companies with 200+ employees under a pending OSHA rule.
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.
A dog flew Singapore Airlines business class from Sydney to Europe via Singapore. The ex-racing greyhound Lewis “is a graduate of Melbourne-based Greyt Greys Rescue” and his owner moved to Italy. She got permission from the Australian government to leave. And since so few others do, her Singapore Airlines flights were almost empty.
If the Biden administration doesn’t blink, pilots are going to have to be vaccinated to fly. They don’t currently even have to wear masks in the cockpit.
While many unvaccinated pilots will get jabbed, and union senior rules mean that the more senior the pilot the harder it is for them to just leave and go fly for someone else, the concern is that the most senior pilots will take retirement. That will also have a cascading effect requiring pilots to get retrained on different equipment, also as a result of union rules.
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 »
