Category Archives for Airlines.
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.
American Airlines is starting to improve in ways that finally show up in the numbers, with customer satisfaction rising faster than at any other major U.S. airline even as the carrier posted another quarterly loss. That is real progress, but the earnings call also made clear how much is still broken — from fleet and seat mix to customer service, coastal relevance, and the lack of a fully realized strategy employees can actually execute.
American Airlines is not just grading flight attendants on customer experience and operational metrics — it is also tying their scores to credit card approvals. That matters because the airline’s most profitable business is selling miles to Citibank, which means inflight card pitches are no longer just a side hustle for crew but part of how performance itself gets measured.
Spirit Airlines is now days away from liquidation, but its collapse did not come out of nowhere. The airline lost the cost advantage that once made it a success, kept selling a product customers increasingly did not want, and then watched bigger rivals learn how to match its fares while offering a better experience.
Frontier Airlines has lost in court after keeping $5.4 million in TSA security taxes that passengers paid on tickets they never used, then arguing the money was theirs once travel credits expired. The ruling is a warning to other carriers still fighting the same battle, because it says those fees were never the airline’s money to keep in the first place.
The Trump administration is reportedly preparing a $500 million bailout for Spirit Airlines, a carrier that has already burned through bankruptcy, taxpayer aid, and private capital without finding a viable business model. If this goes through, it will not just hand public money to a failing airline — it will normalize using legally dubious federal power to socialize losses for companies the market has already given up on.
American Airlines will announce a deal that gives ConciergeKey members access to PS private terminals, extending one of the most exclusive ground products in commercial aviation to its top customers. This fits with PS’s expansion into Dallas and Miami this summer and gives American a new way to make its invitation-only status feel meaningfully more premium than priority check-in, golf carts, and upgrade priority.
Frontier Airlines is suing American after another gate collision between the two carriers, arguing this latest incident was not just a one-off ground accident but part of a pattern. Liability seems clear but it’s not obvious how much Frontier can recover beyond repair costs, and American has already offered to pay half.
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 »
