Category Archives for Airlines.
American Airlines has shared with employees that it won’t be retiring any more aircraft types through 2030. In total, they’ll take delivery of 23 new planes this year, and they will consider an order of new narrowbody aircraft for 2027.
British Airways failed to cater a transatlantic flight from the Caribbean to London on Monday. While they were on the ground in Nassau, they picked up KFC from the airport. Each passenger in economy and in business class received one chicken leg apiece from a bucket.
The American Airlines flight attendants union has sent out a message to members instructing them not to engage in “self help” meaning job actions that hurt the company, without being released from negotiations by the National Mediation Board.
This message comes with a bit of a wink and a nod.
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom’s caveat that updating the contract could come quickly – or it might not – was clearly intentional. It won’t be a matter of just substituting in new, higher pay rates. This suggests they’re going to be negotiating and re-negotiating other language in the deal as well.
Delta Air Lines flight 5637 from New York JFK to Columbus was overbooked on Saturday, and a gate agent found himself begging passengers to take $1,300 and travel at 9 a.m. the next day.
The airline started off offering $800. That’s more than you’ll find American or United offering most of the time. The agent worked his way up to $1,300 volunteer – and he was selling it.
Last week the U.S. House of Representatives voted down an amendment to FAA Reauthorization that would have “require[d] airlines to reinstate pilots who were fired or forced to resign because of vaccine mandates.” Republicans generally favored the amendment, but not overwhelmingly, while all but one voting Democrat opposed it.
The court wasn’t looking to impose a ‘bait and switch’. The airlines initially argued for a long wind-down of the partnership, to which the government objected. The position of American and JetBlue was, our IT systems aren’t set up to base benefits and mileage-earning on date of ticket purchase rather than date flown. So they couldn’t just grandfather old tickets.
That wasn’t flying as a reason to prolong the partnership. Instead what the two airlines came up with eliminating the ability to add each others’ frequent flyer account numbers to reservations.
The tug had “several mechanical issues” including brake faillure. It collided into a guardrail 10 days earlier. On this day the employee started to push back an aircraft, but the tug went faster than usual. It veered right. And the 14-ton vehicle crashed near gate 24 and pinned the man between the vehicle and the jetbridge. One 911 call suggested that the vehicle’s accelerator pedal got stuck.
Tug had been “marked out of service numerous times for failed brakes” it reportedly was not serviced and continued to be used. Maintenance of the vehicle is “managed by Menzies Airlines.”
American Airlines has had technical issues when AAdvantage members put frequent flyer mile award travel on hold, sometimes only holding a reservation for three days instead of the five days promised under their policy. There’s another glitch members are dealing with, and it’s costing them more miles if they don’t pay attention.
Many customers are reporting that when they put an award ticket on hold the flights are stored, but the price quoted doesn’t stick. Here’s one example where a single traveler was asked to pay an additional 122,000 miles:
Normally when passengers don’t receive their meals it’s because of a catering issue. And it’s limited to a few passengers. Maybe they didn’t get their special meal choice, or their first choice wasn’t loaded. If it’s United Airlines, maybe they just ran out of food. But British Airways flight 56 on July 20 may have had the most surprising reason I’ve seen for passengers not to get fed on a long haul flight: the crew rest seats were broken. What does that have to do with feeding passengers, especially since it doesn’t appear that there was trouble catering the aircraft? Crew on an 11 hour flight get rest breaks. Normally on a widebody aircraft they get time in the crew rest area. But if those seats are unavailable they’ll assign business class seats for this…
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 »
