Category Archives for Airlines.
American Airlines and its flight attendants were at the negotiating table with federal mediators in Washington, D.C. for the last six business days. The union reports back that no agreement was reached. They expect the National Mediation Board to insist on one ‘last ditch effort’ to reach an agreement early in June before declaring an impasse, which would start a 30 day ‘cooling off period’ before releasing the parties to ‘self-help’ (a strike).
United Airlines is bringing a new ice cream flavor to long haul business class, along with refreshed toppings and cake starting June 1
There’s exceptional availability in both business and first class on the New York JFK – Hong Kong route in April and May (generally first class is just back from Hong Kong) and you can use this to connect onward in Asia.
American Airlines is back flying to Port-au-Prince, Haiti after service was halted in March following planes being hit by bullets at the airport as violent gangs under the direction of Jimmy Chérizier (“Barbecue”) attacked.
The airline’s pilots seem comfortable going back.
American produced a film to promote travel by air in 1933. Few could afford to fly. American declared, “All seats are first class seats, all passengers first class passengers.” Back then “One of the grandest voyages imaginable is this trip from Chicago to New York.”
Vasu Raja is out at American Airlines. He had a bold view of the world of aviation, and wasn’t afraid to break things. But at large public companies, you can only do that if you succeed.
Bloomberg is reporting that Vasu Raja was let go by American Airlines because of a Bain consulting report saying that corporate customers and travel management companies were unhappy with American’s new systems that hey were supposed to be using. My understanding is that this is inaccurate.
Friday’s United Airlines Newark to Dubrovnik flight was reportedly oversold in business class. United doesn’t normally sell more tickets in business class than they have seats, and it doesn’t appear that the aircraft was swapped to one with a smaller business class cabin.
Nobody would take the airline’s generous offers of compensation, even though “[t]hey offered 2500 and then 3000.”
Southwest Airlines doesn’t offer assigned seats, although that may be changing with a premium seat offering expected to be announced this fall.
In the meantime, even though they do not sell seat assignments, they still manage to earn hundreds of millions of dollars each year on their seats.
A reader shared a complaint sent to Delta about a gate agent in Detroit working a flight to Atlanta who was wearing a Palestine flag pin on Wednesday.
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 »
