Category Archives for Airlines.
American Airlines and flight attendants go back to mediation in Washington, D.C. next week for what the union characterizes as a “last ditch” effort to avoid a strike. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants is telling crewmembers to “prepare for” a strike, and there’s certainly a looming threat and with negotiations dragging on that threat becomes more real. But for now it appears mostly posturing, and a deal seems likely.
American Airlines had several terrible days operationally last week as they battled storms around Dallas and ran low on reserve crew.
On Sunday night an American Airlines passenger, stuck on the ground on a plane in Dallas for three hours, reports being forced “to dial 911 for someone to help us get off [the] plane.”
Charlene Carter was fired as a Southwest Airlines flight attendant in 2017 after criticizing her union, TWU Local 556, for spending crewmember dues advocating for political causes like abortion.
According to American Airlines, appealing the JetBlue partnership anti-trust verdict, “We do want to go forward with similar arrangements, obviously JetBlue is not here and cannot speak, we do.”
Pressed further about whether they really are considering this, the lawyer responds “We would seriously consider that, yes, and the injunction prevents us from doing that.”
United Airlines 998 from Brussels to Newark diverted to Dublin today due to an unruly passenger – and went to quarantine when it landed.
American Airlines is still appealing the government’s win in its anti-trust suit against the Northeast Alliance between it and JetBlue – even though JetBlue abandoned the effort and moved on.
On Thursday, a Delta Air Lines first class passenger “had a poop accident” that “caused an incredibly foul odor throughout the cabin.” The passenger did not clean it up, and others up front wanted the flight attendant to do it.
Standing by for a flight on American Airlines has become an absolute mess. There are new rules that very few customers know about, and failing to follow these secret changes is costing customers hours of their time.
There’s no more running to the gate to catch an earlier flight. American now turns away nearly all customers who try to do this, even when there’s plenty of seats available.
Four check-in agents working the Spirit Airlines counter at BWI airport delivered a beat down to a passenger this week. The heated exchange escalates into a physical confrontation that left the man on the ground, repeatedly attacked by employees of the contractor working for Spirit Airlines.
After comments by American Airlines CEO Robert Isom at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference this week, where he explained changes that he planned to make after the ouster of Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja, many customers and readers of this blog have speculated that the airline would right the ship. After all, Raja was famous for his belief that network is the product.
Would the high cost airline, which desperately needs to convince customers to pay more in order to earn a profit, finally focus on delivering a higher quality product?
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 »
