Category Archives for Airlines.
American Airlines no longer serves champagne in its long haul business class, offering only Italian sparkling wine Ferrari Brut TrentoDOC from Trentino, which is decidedly mid.
A ramp worker in Phoenix, reportedly working for American Airlines, came inside the terminal and completely stripped off his clothes at baggage claim. Naturally there is video.
Once he got naked he… did pushups. This all went on for several minutes before airport police responded and arrested the man.
That time between 24 hours in advance of departure – when check-in opens – and when the flight goes under airport control has just seen some changes to how upgrades work on the back end. An internal memo from American Airlines lays it out, and I reproduce it below.
Your ticket for a flight with meal service does not, in fact, entitle you to a meal. It only entitles you to food if there’s any left when crew reach your row. By predicting that a certain number of passengers won’t eat, airlines can save significantly on their catering costs.
American Airlines widebody aircraft find themselves in a variety of countries, taking on a variety of cargo, and with passengers bringing on things that they probably don’t want to disclose to customs. Planes get infested with a variety of insects. American has a new procedure for dealing with cockroaches in particular – and only on their widebody aircraft.
Air France KLM insists Flying Blue won’t be spun off. CEO Ben Smith was President of Air Canada when their relationship with Aimia which ran the spun-off Aeroplan program went south, and the carrier laid out plans to bring the loyalty program back in house. While some analysts see spinning off loyalty programs as a way of ‘unlocking value’ in fact spinoffs create frictions which destroy value.
A reader, Tommy, reached out surprised by American Airlines charging 250,000 miles for a business class award to Tokyo on a flight the next day with plenty of seats available. I’ve flagged that, though American’s new Flight Awards chart that shows ‘starting at’ pricing is supposed to give members an idea of what to expect, for international business class especially the price American is asking for awards often would make even Delta blush.
But that’s not all you need to know.
Too many restrictions, too long to wait to benefit, but all of those are in place of course to limit the cost to the airline of offering this. You get to use the discount in a short window (breakage) and that window is during an expected lull in travel (when there are seats they wouldn’t sell at full price) – all while ensuring most that take advantage of the discount will be buying a ticket they probably wouldn’t have otherwise. So they hope to drive incremental revenue now, and also at time of redemption, while offering those jumping through their hoops a good deal.
In two weeks, Frontier Airlines ticket counters will “will close for check in and bag drop” 60 minutes prior to departure. You can no longer check bags (even for a fee!) or even check in with a person within an hour of your flight.
While most of the media around former President Trump’s Save America PAC centers on their paying $20 million dollars in legal fees, there’s a nugget buried in their travel expenses that shows the political committee also violates airline rules when purchasing tickets.
Save America’s disclosure form shows them covering a fee to Skiplagged, the website that assists in booking throwaway or hidden city tickets.
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 »
