Category Archives for Airlines.
American Airlines premium cabin wine used to be one of the weakest parts of the onboard experience. Now the airline is rolling out real $30–$40 retail bottles in first and business class, a small but telling sign that American is finally paying attention to the details again.
People pledging money to “buy Spirit Airlines” were already making a dubious bet: the campaign has no cash, no binding commitments, and no plan to fix the airline. Now scammers have spotted the obvious target — fake copycat sites are reportedly taking real money from would-be supporters.
Spirit Airlines offered taxpayers 80% of the company in exchange for a $500 million bailout. Trump wanted 90% and that extra demand may have helped kill the deal, leaving creditors to conclude they were better off liquidating the airline than giving the government nearly everything.
Airlines can fill planes and still be terrible businesses. The same competition that gives passengers cheaper fares and more choices also makes capacity hard to manage, prices easy to undercut, and profits fragile — which is why airlines keep searching for moats in hubs, loyalty programs, credit cards and premium product differentiation.
With employees gone and baggage offices empty, passengers whose luggage was found may still have no one there to give it back.
American Airlines has struck a deal with the PS terminals to offer a complimentary use to ConciergeKey members.
Spirit Airlines’ collapse has become a political Rorschach test: one side says blocked mergers killed it, another says deregulation and Wall Street did, and some are using it to argue for nationalizing the airlines entirely. They are all reaching too hard. Spirit’s failure says less about capitalism failing than about what happens when policy tries to over-engineer an industry.
British Airways is cutting one of the last visual cues that Club Europe is supposed to be business class. Starting this week, the airline is removing fabric headrest covers from intra-Europe business class seats — a small premium touch BA says will save cleaning time and help punctuality.
A photo of a Singapore Airlines flight attendant assisting a passenger’s foot has gone viral with claims that first class includes on-demand foot rubs or “foot cleansing.” The image may be real, but the service almost certainly is not: this looks far more like first aid or assistance with an injured passenger than some secret Singapore Airlines luxury perk
British Airways managed to damage a 787-10 on the ground at Heathrow. Engineering steps were placed under the aircraft, then the jet was fueled, got heavier, settled lower, and sank onto them. The Chicago flight was canceled, passengers waited packed on buses for 90 minutes, and BA may now owe roughly $352,000 in delay compensation before hotels and meals.
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 »
