Category Archives for Airlines.
A LATAM Airlines Boeing 787-9 from Miami to Santiago landed Wednesday morning with armed gunmen waiting for it, tipped off that it was carrying $32.5 million in cash that was supposed to be taken to banks via armored car.
Ten gunmen laid in wait, and engaged in a shootout with security officers. Both an officer and one of the armed thieves died in the attack, while the remaining nine shooters fled – covering their tracks by burning the vehicles they’d used.
JSX planes have StarLink internet which I’ve found to be crazy fast, with low latency. That’s not just great for checking email and web browsing. It also works for video conferencing. And they’re the first carrier certified by FAA to allow it.
So when you fly JSX you can use Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, or your other app of choice – to participate in a meeting at work, call home at dinner time or bed time, and to… annoy your fellow passengers?
want to see Spirit Airlines continue as a standalone company. I think that is better for airfares and for diversity in business models. I also don’t think buying Spirit is a good idea for JetBlue. They are operationally challenged to begin with and the complexity of a merger and integration won’t make air travel better. JetBlue is massively overpaying.
As a result I’ve maintained that the JetBlue deal to acquire Spirit is bad for customers and bad for shareholders. However bad business decisions are not in themselves, illegal.
With tensions rising among pilots at American Airlines, management has put out a message directly to cockpit crew – rather than staying quiet in negotiations with its union – letting them know just how generous an offer they’re making: by the fourth year of the company’s proposed deal, a narrowbody captain would make as much as $475,000 – and a widebody captain up to $590,000 per year.
I’ve been warning that there was no way this award would last. Virgin Atlantic’s miles are, on the whole, otherwise not very valuable. Awards that are several standard deviations better than average never last. Virgin also has a history of making changes without notice whatsoever.
Throughout the pandemic I was a proponent of the individual choice to mask. I favored airlines imposing their own mask requirements in spring 2020, long before the federal government made existing airline rules a legal requirement. I liked, though, that some airlines handled their exception policies differently, for instance Delta was more flexible with young children and so wasn’t kicking two and three year olds off of planes.
I’ve been a fan of properly wearing a high quality mask. These are no longer necessary as a Covid-19 precaution as such, but remain helpful against airborne spread of viruses generally.
According to the new CFO of American Airlines, they will be making fewer investments over the next decade than was seen before the pandemic. They’ve built up so much debt that interest payments alone will total $2.1 billion this year.
Northern Pacific Airways started out with a strange business plan to fly one-stop between several U.S. cities and Asia via a connecting hub in Anchorage using used Boeing 757s (including retired American Airlines planes).
They pivoted their business plan to fly between the U.S. and Mexico, and then they pivoted saying they wanted to base at Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, operating from there to destinations throughout the Asia Pacific region (huh). Now they’re filed actual flight service.
A Turkish Airlines Istanbul – Barcelona flight was forced to turn back after sensors went off on the aircraft – determined to have been caused by the smell emitted from durian fruit in the cargo hold.
Southwest Airlines flight 3923 from Havana to Fort Lauderdale experienced a bird strike on climb out from runway six. The Boeing 737 MAX’s right engine “emitted three loud bangs and streaks of flames.” The engine caught fire and the passenger cabin filled with smoke.
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 »
