Category Archives for Airlines.
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.
The airline used to brag about its involvement with the Kariba project in Zimbabwe. Bloomberg‘s Matt Levine calls the folks involved “ESG Consultant[s] But Evil.”
On the one hand, it isn’t the airline that left the loaf. On the other hand, the customer didn’t get what they expected. Does the airline owe at least a partial refund, or like the contract of carriage says it’s just transportation from A to B with no promises there won’t be this sort of exposure along the way?
You can upgrade award tickets! This isn’t limited to buying business class with cash and upgrading with miles. If your upgrade doesn’t clear in advance, you can upgrade at the airport. And there there are no capacity controls. And there are no cash co-pays in addition to miles for the upgrade.
Plus their first class is a special product.
Southwest Airlines has announced changes to make earning status easier from flying and from credit card spend, a new benefit to top tier status, and greater flexibility for all members in redeeming their points.
American Airlines is replacing its small business loyalty program Business ExtrAA with the new AAdvantage Business which is now available. Instead of having a completely separate program, small businesses will earn AAdvantage miles in their own account on top of the miles earned by travelers, and they’ll redeem miles just like consumers will.
That’s a simpler system, and there’s one clear benefit for travelers: they will earn one additional loyalty point towards their status per dollar spent when adding an AAdvantage for Business account number to their reservation.
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 »
