Category Archives for Airlines.
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.
One passenger who flew from Tokyo to Bangkok in order to catch the 9 hour 45 minute El Al flight from Tel Aviv shared the story of scores of young people trying to get on in order to heed their call up in the reserves or enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces. There were far more hopeful passengers than seats. With the captain’s permission, those people flew anyway.
I thought Delta would have a good chance keeping the slot if it proposed a New York JFK flight (a new competitor on the route in an important market, and ironically one with much better connectivity now that the Department of Justice forced American and JetBlue to break up their partnership). I also thought that the best shot of winning would be new service from a market that currently lacks a non-stop to Tokyo, such as Miami (or Orlando).
However Delta is telling its employees that the slot will go to American or to United.
What happens if you’ve purchased a ticket, you’re about to board your flight, and the airline demands $400 that you don’t have? Two women traveling United Airlines had to find out. And they were only able to fly, along with all of their belongings, thanks to the kindness of a stranger traveling on the same flight that day who pulled out her own credit card.
The Oregon-based musician, singer, and Rhodes scholar JT Flowers shared what he witnessed at the boarding gate. Two passengers, that he noted were “black women speaking broken English,” were told that they could not board because “they can’t afford to pay $400 to check two tiny purses at the gate.”
There are elevated terrorism threats with Hamas calling for attacks on Jews today. The world is in a state of crisis, as Iran and Hezbollah try to draw the U.S. into war in the Mideast, after Hamas massacred Israeli civilians.
American Airlines, though, saw the real threat: flight attendants visiting corporate headquarters.
American Airlines flight attendants, led by union President Julie Hedrick, delivered a letter of ‘no confidence’ in management to Senior Vice President Brady Byrnes on Thursday. The airline’s reaction to union members at ‘Skyview’ corporate headquarters was to put out a memo to security to “BOLO” – Be On The Lookout – for anyone wearing a union t-shirt.
The American Airlines flight attendants union has reduced pay demands ever so slightly, but extended out the period of time they’re talking about to get up to a 50% bump in wages in order to sell it to their members.
They’re still outside the zone of possible agreement, though. And they’re saying they are “holding firm on” wages after taking a strike authorization vote in which over 99% of voting crew supported going on strike. They want a 50% increase in wages – firm – and they’re threatening strike to get it.
According to an internal memo, United is boarding planes two minutes slower than they were prior to the pandemic. And so they’re moving to what they call WILMA, which is basically ‘Window Middle Aisle,” and adding a new sixth boarding group for domestic flights.
American Airlines is adding a seasonal route network from the Northeast to summer seaside destinations in and around Cape Cod as well as Maine and Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Previously most of these destinations would have been served to American’s customers by JetBlue, but that partnership is mostly through winding down after a district court judge ruled against it in an anti-trust case.
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 »
