Category Archives for Airlines.
When Alaska Airlines announced their new distance-based award charts back in November, they teased that there would be regular discounts not just on Alaska Airlines travel but also on airline partner travel as well.
The lavatory of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 from Honolulu to Anchorage flooded the aisle with up to 4 inches of water on Saturday, forcing the aircraft to turn around.
Flight attendants can be seen on video trying to sop up the water using paper towels. It was a losing battle.
ITA Airways is the new Alitalia – a small Italian state airline that the EU keeps slow-walking Lufthansa’s ability to buy. It’s Alitalia with a new name, without some of its legacy costs, but with many of the same problems with its business model.
One thing that’s different about ITA Airways, though, is the frequent flyer program. ITA Airways is a member of SkyTeam but it only has limited participation. They don’t fully link up with all other members of the alliance.
A woman on Southwest Airlines may have set a record by occupying 13 seats prior to departure. She boarded early and saved seats for 12 other passengers – four rows of seats seats apiece.
On Friday, United Airlines flight 59 from Frankfurt to San Francisco had to turn around when a toilet overflowed. The Boeing 777-300ER was at 30,000 feet around 70 nautical miles northwest of Amsterdam when pilots asked to enter a holding pattern to troubleshoot the lav. Half an hour later they turned back.
Apparently one of the lavatory toilets “overflowed” and what was called “the soup” spilled into the cabin, with an unbearable stench.
According to data from Cirium, the price of U.S. domestic airfares are up 9% versus 2019, while inflation is up 19%. That means tickets are cheaper in real terms.
If Jimmy McMillan had been a resident of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, he might have declared the airfares are too damned high!. Politicians in Guam and Saipan have figured out that you never lose by taking on the cost of air travel. And, they complain, that “[a] roundtrip ticket from Saipan to Guam can cost up to $580 on United Airlines. That’s more expensive than some tickets from the Marianas to destinations in Asia.”
The government of Brazil is working to engineer a three-way merger between LATAM, Gol, and Azul. The objective seems to be for the government to save money on subsidies and bailouts with a single dominant carrier.
Emergency services responded to the aircraft in order to treating multiple passengers on-site for injuries from the turbulence. Six people were transported to a local hospital. Other passengers called it like a “roller coaster” and a “Six Flags” ride.
The airline’s founding was all about its refusal to fly out of DFW airport. Their intra-Texas model depended on short commutes to the airport. The DFW Metroplex has evolved substantially over the past 50 years, and Dallas – Fort Worth it itself a closer airport to much of the population.
And Southwest can’t grow at Love Field anymore, in part because no one can given the reduction in gates there that handed the carrier a near-monopoly. So DFW growth now makes sense, and they’re likely to jump in just as soon as they’re able.
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 »
