Airlines

Category Archives for Airlines.

United’s 17-Hour Flight Hell: From Weather, Mechanical, and Crew Issues to Customer Service Win

by Gary Leff

Aug 08 2024

Sunday morning’s United flight 1116 from Washington Dulles to San Francisco cancelled… after passengers waited around for about 17 hours.

Several issues compounded here – from weather delaying the inbound aircraft, mechanical problems and an aircraft swap, to crew timing out and exceeding their maximum duty hours. Passengers made it onto the Boeing 787 twice and even pushed back from the gate. That’s a miserable travel day that, paradoxically, highlights something that United does really well: communicates with customers throughout.

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Qantas Board Slashes Ex-CEO Bonuses: Just a Smokescreen For Government Protection Racket?

by Gary Leff

qantasplane
Aug 08 2024

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce had to symbolically take the fall for the tragic decline in reputation and treatment of customers during and coming out of the pandemic. He was retiring anyway so he resigned two months early. This had basically no effect on him or on the airline, but was played as though he was paying a price, and that this was a moment to turn the airline around.

Now the board has ‘cut his pay’ and has ‘done so retroactively’. But it’s just a smokescreen to continue the government protection racket that dragged down the Qantas experience in the first place.

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How To Predict Your Flight Will Be Delayed And Get A Leg Up Rebooking Travel

by Gary Leff

Aug 07 2024

When I’m traveling I almost always try to predict whether my flight will be delayed. That can give me an hours-long head start in getting re-routed, rather than stuck at the airport. I’ll have access to more flight choices, especially if I can leave earlier. And I won’t be fighting with as many passengers over a limited number of seats, since I’ll be ahead of them in grabbing what’s available – and with full planes, that’s often very little.

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Severe Turbulence Sends Meal Trays And Passenger Flying, Injures 14 on Korean Air Mongolia Flight

by Gary Leff

Aug 07 2024

On August 4, Korean Air flight 197 from Seoul to Ulaanbaatar encountered severe turbulence injuring 14 passengers and crew about one hour after departure from Incheon Airport, while flying near Tianjin Airport in China at an altitude of 34,100 feet.

The turbulence struck suddenly during the meal service, causing trays and unsecured items to be thrown about the cabin. Passengers described the scene as chaotic, and a passenger hit their head on the ceiling before falling into the aisle.

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United Airlines Axes Hemisphere Inflight Magazine, The End Of “Three Perfect Days”

by Gary Leff

Aug 07 2024

Delta’s outsourced Sky magazine laid off all its staff at the start of the pandemic. American, which outsourced American Way starting with US Airways management’s takeover in 2015, followed suit a year later despite The Onion once suggesting that the airline stop flying passengers to focus on its core magazine business.

And now United Airlines has followed suit axing its Hemispheres magazine from seatback pockets.

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Hyatt Elites Get 4 Months Of Free American Airlines Status, And A Shot At Top Tier Elite

by Gary Leff

Aug 06 2024

Overall I find American’s offers too complicated, but many Hyatt elites should take advantage of them anyway – for the short-term status, or longer-term since it’s easy to generate loyalty points via credit card spend and online shopping – and there’s no fee associated with the offer when it comes though the Hyatt partnership.

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Microsoft Says Delta Lying About Its Meltdown: It’s The Airline’s IT That Failed

by Gary Leff

Aug 06 2024

When Delta’s systems melted down, they lost track of crew. They were making announcements in terminals looking for pilots who could work. Their crew scheduling systems collapsed. It took days for those systems to catch up, running several instances in parallel (which caused its own problems, as those systems needed to sync). The meltdown was caused by crew scheduling system failures and that system was IBM, not Microsoft according to Satya Nadella and Microsoft’s lawyers.

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