Category Archives for Airlines.
Delta has been talking up free wifi for years, but they didn’t have enough bandwidth on their planes. When you make wifi free, more people use it, and that slows down the service. Ditching Gogo for ViaSat solves for this.
Gradually they’ve been rolling out free wifi, and starting February 1 it’ll be for everyone on domestic flights.
American Airlines is eliminating service entirely to Long Beach, California; Columbus, Georgia; and Del Rio, Texas. American Airlines is the only carrier serving Del Rio. This is the result of losing Mesa Airlines as a regional partner.
Connecting space within 2-3 days of travel can now be booked in Swiss first using United miles.
The explanation of technology for Southwest’s woes, while true, also exposes a gap in people. They didn’t have enough people to rebuild their schedules by hand and were taking volunteers from within the company. There’s also a knowledge deficit.
There’s going to be a lot of IT spending ahead, and also a lot of work on culture ahead, for Southwest. Passengers will forgive them. But capital spending and culture are harder. And around a fifth of employees don’t have a long-term experience with the company against which to judge recent unpleasantness, including being stranded away from home for some time.
United occasionally runs short-term award sales, and doesn’t always tell everyone. For Cyber Monday they ran up to 50% off coach awards to Europe and Asia Pacific.
Today they’re doing up to 47% off of Hawaii awards, with the best deals for elite members who also have a co-brand credit card.
Southwest Airlines likes to remind customers about their friendly features. They don’t sell basic economy tickets. All of their tickets have been fully changeable. Their flight credits don’t expire. They offer two free checked bags.
But in the aftermath of their historic operational meltdown over the holidays, we have a reminder of one of the ways that Southwest Airlines goes to war with any tools that help customers compare prices and get the best deals.
I’m all for suing airlines. I suggested it as the best way to get a refund from Air Canada. I have argued for years that common law contract claims against the airlines need to be permitted. I just figure we ought to give airlines an opportunity to actually do the thing you’re suing over before actually filing suit.
This summer the Supreme Court let stand a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said flight attendants based in California are subject to the state’s rest rules.
In Bernstein v. Virgin America the court found that California could require 30 minute meal breaks for flight attendants every 5 hours, and 10 minute rest breaks every four hours.
Kuwait Airways is under fire after women applying to become flight attendants report being required to strip down to their underwear as part of the interview process.
The interviews, which occurred in Madrid, are under investigation by Spain’s Ministry of Labor, after a contractor conducting the interviews at the Meliá Barajas hotel was said to require these women to bare themselves in order to check for tattoos, scars, and other marks.
While there was much talk in 2021 about AAdvantage devaluations, they committed not to change their award chart as they rolled out Loyalty Points as a new way to earn elite status. Now the deferred chickens may come home to roost – risking the value of the AAdvantage program, the revenue streams for co-brand partners, and the quality of AAdvantage-backed debt.
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 »
