Category Archives for Airlines.
At the end of last year United Airlines ordered 100 Boeing 787s with options for 100 more, in addition to ordering 56 Boeing 737 Maxs and exercising options on 44 that were previously ordered as part of a massive buy in 2021.
United is going back to market for even more planes.
Delta wants us to believe that they are just trying to solve a problem – that there are too many elites for the benefits available like upgrades and club access. They have no choice! Victims of their own success!
The truth is that planned Delta changes weren’t about scarcity of benefits or too many Diamonds. It was all about squeezing customers for more American Express spend because Delta is trying to move from $7 billion in revenue from American Express to $10 billion. But they went too far.
There was a 352% increase in negative online commentary about Delta following their announced changes, and that’s compared to the week of the Delta diarrhea plane.
Airline expenses break down across planes, labor, and jet fuel. The amount of fuel it takes to fly a plane varies based on how much weight the plane needs to carry. So if passengers would lose weight, airlines would save money. If everyone dropped 10 pounds on Ozempic, United Airlines would save $80 million per year.
Two grandparents traveling with their 11 month old grandson were met by police on arrival in Detroit on Sunday after a flight attendant reported them for human trafficking.
They had flown in from Punta Cana, where the grandmother had spoken at a conference. Dee Dee Ohara Blizard is Black, and her husband is Japanese. And the child’s skin color looks different than theirs. That appears to have raised alarms with Delta cabin crew.
All of the great strategies for keeping people from sitting next to you on Southwest, so you can have an empty middle, don’t work when a flight attendant calls out passengers for trying. One passenger films herself trying to avoid passengers who might sit in her row. And you can hear a flight attendant announcing not to try.
American Airlines flight attendants are sticking “We Are Ready” tags on their bags, highlighting a willingness to strike for a better contract. But flight attendants aren’t actually ready.
What Delta forgot about its customers, but has since been reminded: if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out immediately. However, if the frog is placed in tepid water that is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. You’re the frog.
Virgin Atlantic is offering 25% off awards booked by October 3 for travel October 1 through December 31, 2023.
Chase, Capital One, Citibank, American Express and Bilt points all transfer to Virgin so it’s easy to access these points if you don’t already have them.
Bastian has previously said that the changes to elite status and lounge access are not the end of what members can expect (“over the next several years we’ll announce additional changes to qualification and to how a mile is awarded”). And, of course, even after those changes were announced they quietly devalued SkyMiles further by raising the price of Mexico-originating awards (one of the bets values that had remained in the program for use of miles). Mileage devaluations continue even as they talk about “modifications” to status and lounge access changes they’ve recently announced.
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 »
