Category Archives for Airlines.
The best way to search Air France and KLM award space is on the AirFrance.us website. You hunt and peck a day at a time for availability. But they have a hidden award calendar and all you need to do to see it is leave your travel dates blank.
Delta lets passengers choose in advance the option to skip a meal, and save the airline money. Japan Airlines even suggests that doing so is a moral imperative.
This is a trend sweeping the industry, reducing food cost by getting passengers to pre-committing not to eat. United is a part of it too, and they are offering customers more than one choice now to nudge them not to eat. Both of these options that appear when pre-ordering mean the same thing, United can spend less on catering.
On January 24th, American Airlines flight attendants will be conducting ‘informational picketing’ at the airline’s hubs and also in Boston and San Francisco. They’re unhappy with the time it’s taken to get a new contract, and that American Airlines flat out rejects many of the changes to work rules their union proposes.
American, for its part, has been telling cabin crew that on the same day as the picketing they’ll be serving free chili inside the airport instead.
Delta is back on top. Perennial strong competitor Alaska is right behind though they had numerous operational problems. Southwest comes in third – even though they completely failed over the holidays (recency bias!) and their on-time performance frequently lags with shorter turn times for aircraft. JetBlue is consistently an operational mess, here worse than Spirit and Frontier.
While I expect Delta to tout its win, note the subheading is “No one airline had a particularly good year.”
Originally promised for fall 2022 back in May, the new Air France long haul product launches for the first time from Paris to New York JFK on Friday, January 20, 2023.
VietJet, founded by Vietnam’s first self-made female billionaire, is known for promoting new routes with women wearing bikinis. They’ve developed the reputation as ‘the bikini airline’. However aviation and female sexuality is hardly limited to Asia.
Starlux Airlines is turning their newest Airbus A350 into a fashion show.
Air India is on the verge of announcing an order for 500 aircraft, which would give them an order book similar in size to United Airlines.
They are expected to order 400 narrowbody planes, and 100 widebodies. According to one of the biggest players in airline leases, the order will likely be Airbus A320neos, A321neos and 737 MAXs, plus 787s, 777Xs, and Airbus A350s.
Singapore Airlines is one of the world’s best carriers, some would even say the best overall. Their product isn’t just premium at the front end of the aircraft, they pay attention to little details in economy like a bit more legroom; cup holders and foot rests on long haul seats; quality food and one of the best entertainment systems. Service is known to be almost universally good.
What some people don’t realize is that they do not fly just to Singapore. They fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo. They fly from New York to Frankfurt and they fly from Houston to Manchester, England.
Star Alliance member ANA, a United Airlines partner, has offered one of the world’s best first class products for a long time – and it has kept getting better. Often underrated compared to Emirates, Air France and others, their new “The Suite” seat is outstanding; service is among the best in the world albeit tending towards Japanese formality; and the catering truly hard to beat, if not as varied as it once was.
Now that American Airlines has rolled out new iPhones and iPads to frontline employees they’ve been given a new tool. The airline has been talking up how they’ll use ConnectMe for four years.
It’s now been extended to 17 airports (including all of the airline’s hubs) to improve communication between the gate and crew on board an aircraft that’s getting ready to depart. This way flight attendants don’t have to pick up the phone and gate agents don’t come running down the jetbridge. There are two new things cabin crew are using it for.
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 »
