Category Archives for Airlines.
Air Canada Aeroplan is changing its award chart again on June 1, and while a few prices go down, this is unmistakably a devaluation. The biggest pain hits long-haul premium cabins, where many of the most useful business and first class partner awards will cost meaningfully more.
The White House is trying to justify a $500 million Spirit Airlines rescue by claiming the carrier is somehow essential to national defense, even though Spirit is a failing ultra-low-cost airline with no obvious military necessity.
United CEO Scott Kirby says the airline is in talks to buy assets from another carrier, a remark that immediately raises the question of whether he means pieces of Spirit or JetBlue. United has been openly hunting for ways to strengthen weak spots in Florida and New York without waiting for a full merger.
Etihad is expanding in two U.S. markets at a moment when Middle East demand looks shaky, adding a second daily Chicago flight and boosting Charlotte to daily service for the summer. On the surface that looks aggressive, but the real play is not local Abu Dhabi demand — it is feeding U.S. traffic to India and South Asia while the airline has aircraft available.
Emirates says private bathrooms are the next frontier for first class, with president Tim Clark confirming the airline is developing suites that would have their own dedicated lavatories. If it happens, Emirates would move beyond its long-running shower spa concept and join a tiny group of airlines trying to make first class feel less like a premium seat and more like a private space in the sky.
American Airlines is being sued by the EEOC after allegedly keeping a blind reservations agent on unpaid leave for nearly four years, refusing to make screen reader software work, and then firing her. The case is now turning into a fight over whether the airline can block testing of its software systems after claiming the technology could not reasonably accommodate her disability.
President Trump is now openly floating a federal rescue of Spirit Airlines, saying “I think we just buy” the carrier even as his administration still has no clear legal path to make that happen. Here’s what betting market odds look like on the outcome.
Spirit Airlines told a bankruptcy judge it could run out of usable cash next week, even after carving out restricted funds for payroll, taxes, and creditor-controlled accounts. Spirit is not presenting a real path back to profitability — it is asking the court to help it survive long enough for a legally dubious government bailout to arrive (which it may quickly burn through).
Flight attendants union head Sara Nelson is now urging President Trump to throw Spirit Airlines a lifeline, a remarkable turn for one of organized labor’s most prominent progressive voices. Her appeal doubles as an argument that the Biden administration’s antitrust decision helped push Spirit to the brink, even as the bailout now being discussed appears to have no real basis in law.
President Trump had not yet decided whether to rescue Spirit Airlines when two of his cabinet secretaries argued the case in front of him, with one side pitching a bailout as a midterm political win and the other warning it would look like a costly rescue of a failing company. The striking part is not just that the White House is weighing a $500 million loan and a potential 90% ownership stake, but that there is still no plausible legal authority for the federal government to do it.
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 »
