At a recent American Airlines employee question and answer event, a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing, a flight attendant asked CEO Doug Parker about frequent inflight incidents with passengers. Parker acknowledged, “much of it is due to the masks, I know.” Parker predicts that the conflicts over masks “may get even harder between now and September 13th.”
The plan is to be “encouraging customers to authorize tips at check-in to ensure staff were recognized for their hard work” and having these charged to credit cards, since customers are carrying less cash. They’re also “considering adding a minimum gratuity to restaurant checks.”
This is a tipping point, according to the chain’s CEO, for consumers deciding whether to retain the elevated tipping levels of the pandemic, when consumers felt bad for hotel workers serving customers or whether they’ll revert to pre-pandemic tipping practices. The chain’s task, he believes, is “to educate customers about how hard staff had been working,” and make sure they continue elevated tipping. Hard work shouldn’t be recognized by higher wages.
United Airlines flight UA5365 from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City was delayed 3 hours and 40 minutes Friday night, not arriving until 1:25 a.m. on Saturday, after a passenger tried to enter the cockpit of the SkyWest regional jet prior to departure from LAX. When that didn’t work, he opened the door of the aircraft, popping the slide, and slid down onto the tarmac.
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.
At the start of 2020 a New York state Senator introduced a consumer protection bill to protect bank points. It prohibits bank points expiration and requires banks to give consumers 90 days to use their credit card rewards points if their account is closed either by the consumer or the bank.
I noted last summer that the legislation had passed the state’s Senate. Now the bill has passed both the Senate and state Assembly, and awaits the Governor’s signature.
Hyatt has a partnership with SLH Hotels that lets you earn points and status at those properties (when booking paid rates through Hyatt) and redeem points at these same properties, though not all of the hotels are part of this arrangement.
Shortly before the pandemic the partnership had grown to include about half of the SLH hotels. We hadn’t seen any additions since then, which isn’t surprising since many hotels would have wanted to pause investment in integration during the pandemic.
he last round of subsidies started after American Airlines was already cash flow break even starting in March.
And, it turns out, that the current round of airline payroll subsidies are actually the reason why American Airlines overscheduled its operation and is now cancelling flights.
Hilton may be planning to build a hotel in China over a bulldozed Uyghur mosque. The Chinese government has engaged in ethnic cleaning against the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, detaining approximately a million people over the past 5 years and subjecting them to abuse and re-education, forcing them to denounce their religion.
The situation begins as the agent and passenger have a confrontation over her bag at the bottom of the jet bridge, in front of the aircraft’s boarding door. The woman has words with him, not wanting to give up the bag. They both have their hands on the bag, wrestling for it as the woman tries to board even as she’s told she can’t bring it on. And the words escalate to violence, as she lunges at the employee.
Finally the employee grabs the bag and starts taking it up the jet bridge. The passenger latches onto it, and starts to get dragged with it.
When David Dao was dragged off of a United Express aircraft and bloodied, the carrier outsourced the dirty work to Chicago Aviation Police.
The TSA, though, has a program to teach flight attendants how to do this themselves. It’s been suspended during the pandemic. But the TSA announced today that they are bringing it back because of the rise of onboard incidents, mostly centered around masks.
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 »
