Category Archives for Airlines.
At the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference this morning, American Airlines CEO Robert Isom declared that the carrier’s plan to eliminate mileage-earning from some travel agency tickets is off.
Dallas experienced severe storms on Tuesday. That delayed my flights out of Austin, even though our weather wasn’t bad, and the plane I was on arrived early from Boston.
Just a week ago the airline went around on the record saying “Vasu’s not leaving.”
However today American Airlines announced that Raja “will depart the airline in June.” There was no quote from Raja. There was no quote from CEO Robert Isom. Nothing about the tremendous value he’s added to the company. He’s just out.
My absolute favorite piece of coverage of the incident comes from local Colorado Springs KKTV11, “We are learning that according to a Southwest website, the company uses Boeing aircraft. I have not yet confirmed that this was a Boeing plane involved in this incident tonight.”
A class action lawsuit against American Airlines for violating its duties to employees over their 401(k) accounts can move forward. The suit argues that including ESG investment options violates fiduciary obligations, because they prioritize social change over financial returns.
Do large airlines’ rewards programs hurt competition? That’s the question that the Biden administration is asking.
One of the better tricks to flying comfortably is when there are cheap tickets, just buy two. You often need to work with the airline (don’t just buy an extra seat in your own name, the airline might think it’s a duplicate). But you can usually buy more than one seat and sit in both. That’s more space for a lot less money than paying for business or first class.
Finnair, based in Helsinki, is a member of the oneworld alliance. It is even part of the transatlantic joint venture between American Airlines and British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus. But until recently its frequent flyer program wasn’t very useful.
The airline has linked up with British Airways and other partners to use Avios as its currency, now guarantees award availability for at least two business class seats on its own flights when schedules are first released if you’re redeeming Avios, and has revised its award chart to offer some fantastic values.
This is a first for me in passengers behaving badly at the airport – loading up bags of snacks from an American Airlines Admirals Club to take away. The food isn’t even good!
Right now there’s wide open availability from 11 U.S. cities on Qatar Airways to book mileage awards in their QSuites business class – to Doha and beyond, whether you’re looking at the Middle East, Maldives, or Africa. Use it to get to India or Pakistan, too.
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 »
