Category Archives for Airlines.
There’s a new Chinese airline forming out of Hong Kong, expected to partially launch in four weeks, with an explicit aim of celebrating – and fostering – the turn of Hong Kong away from the west and towards the Chinese Communist Party.
Greater Bay Airlines plans to make its inaugural flight – a charter to Beijing – on October 1, the 72nd anniversary of the Community Party takeover of China.
When an airline tells you they aren’t going to do as much for you in the event they delay or cancel flights – even when it’s their fault, not the weather – you should take the message loud and clear.
Several days ago I ticketed award travel on a oneworld airline using American AAdvantage miles. Since there was a schedule change (by a few minutes) between when I put the reservation on hold and when I was ready to ticket, I had to call an agent rather than issuing the award online.
Three days passed and I never got a ticketing email. The awards still showed as being ‘On Request’. So I rang up American to fix the problem. The agent, naturally, first told me there was no problem but that’s obviously wrong.
An airline’s CEO gets unlimited free travel, naturally. But United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby is unique. He and his family don’t just get to fly United for free. They can fly as much as they want on American Airlines, any flight in any class of service, as well.
That’s because Kirby was let go as President of American Airlines and immediately became President of United – in a move I hoped at the time would make both airlines better (it’s benefited United). This paved the way for Kirby to become CEO at United.
Friday afternoon’s United Airlines flight from Dubrovnik to Newark was delayed about an hour and a half on departure. On arrival passengers were let off the aircraft and staff opened a door into the terminal instead of directing passengers to immigration and customs.
The mistake was caught quickly, and as one passenger on the flight put it, the airline worked to “round up all of the people that headed off into the terminal.” Passengers were then held “until they figure out what to do next.”
A passenger passes along a photo from on board Thursday’s American Airlines flight AA3145. The SkyWest Bombardier CRJ-700 (registration N716EV) was headed from Phoenix to Santa Rosa.
This 18 year old CR7, ex-Atlantic Southeast and ExpressJet, moved over to Skywest in December 2018 and sat in storage until Feb 2021. And the interior looked like it should never have been taken out of storage.
Perhaps the greatest challenge with Covid-19 has been its infectiousness prior to presenting with symptoms. In generally people with symptomatic Covid are most infectious in the two days prior to showing symptoms and the three days after.
There’s a lot of debate over how effective masks are, and to conflate the different types of masks. What’s important is to continually look at new evidence and update priors when warranted.
The New Orleans Saints had to find a new place to play their ‘home opener’ against the Green Bay Packers. They chose Jacksonville, Florida of all place. And it’s thanks in part to Expedia. The online travel agency site helped them figure out that this would be the toughest and most expensive city for Packers fans to get to.
At the point where they’re willing to take 60,000 miles the award, is it that hard to make seats available and call them saver?
Instead these are ‘web specials’ which means that there are no changes permitted. For simple itineraries that’s no big deal because American eliminated all cancel and redeposit fees for awards (for all members, this is no longer a benefit restricted to Executive Platinum and Concierge Key members). That means you can cancel the ticket, get your miles back, and book a new ticket.
The Southwest Airlines pilots union is suing the airline for, it says, making unilateral changes to pilot pay and working conditions without bargaining with the union. That sounds bad, because we know there’s a union contract, but let’s dig a little deeper.
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 »
