Category Archives for Airlines.
Southwest Airlines lets passengers pick their own seats once they’re on board the aircraft. The earlier you board, the better choice of seats you have.
And Southwest allows passengers with disabilities to preboard. This is largely on the honor system, and as we know most people lack honor.
Cirium’s Diio Mi shows both scheduled flights and actual performance. Their data between October 7 and October 19 is interesting for Tel Aviv flying, with most airlines suspending operations.
El Al, which normally operates 22% of flights in and out of Tel Aviv, has completed 97% of its schedule since terrorist attacks began.
The government’s oil company won’t provide fuel to the government’s airline unless they pay up front and they have limited funds to pay with.
Air Canada has sued award search website Seats.Aero in Delaware court for pulling award availability from its website. They claim (1) trademark infringement for use of its marks, and (2) violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for accessing its systems without authorization.
There may be a real problem for Air Canada here, but their legal claims appear weak – and certainly bad from a public policy standpoint. They have deeper pockets, though, and sometimes that’s enough to prevail.
We’ve seen belligerent or drunk passengers try to open the door of a commercial aircraft while inflight. And unless the plane is at sufficiently low altitude, or a door’s seal fails, it will almost always be pressurized such that this is impossible.
What I don’t think I’ve seen before is an flight that takes off with a door that’s still open!
They’re in a bit of a pickle because they don’t have the financial strength and performance to absorb higher labor costs, and may be tempted to squeeze elsewhere. But this constrains revenue growth potential, and makes for an even bigger problem. As a high cost airline they also need to be a high revenue airline, which means offering a better product not just a reliable domestic schedule.
Tony Fernandes, CEO of AirAsia, shared a photo of himself chairing a management meeting. Shirtless. While getting a massage.
While neither American nor United targeted disaffected SkyMiles elite, who felt they were being fired as the airlines employees told complaining customers to stop being poor, CNBC’s Leslie Josephs asked during the question and answer period of the earnings call whether United has seen an uptick in status match requests.
After Delta’s evisceration of elite qualification rules for next year, announcing the end of earning status by miles and flights flown; moving entirely to dollars spent; and increasing the amount of spending required for status substantially, as well as severely restricting access by premium credit card customers to its lounges, Delta acknowledged that they had moved ‘too quickly’ by ‘pulling the band aid off all at once’ and promised to moderate their changes for the coming year.
During the United Airlines third quarter earnings call the carrier announced that they would not be making changes to their elite program. Normally the lack of changes aren’t noteworthy, but it’s been a big question from members since Delta has announced big changes and even in the face of backlash has merely suggested they rolled changes out too quickly not that the changes themselves were a mistake.
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 »
