Category Archives for Airlines.
Once you’re on the bus you can usually be confident that you’ll at least make the plane. I’ve never seen passengers miss a flight once on the bus.
Yet somehow Indian low cost carrier Go First boarded passengers on a 1058 mile flight from Bangalore to Delhi onto a bus and then forgot them. Reportedly 55 passengers were left behind. Four buses were used for the flight, but only three bus loads of passengers actually made it into the cabin.
Dubbed United NEXT, the fleet plan was ambitious and positioned the airline as a more premium airline. And then… nothing happened. A year and a half passed and they didn’t actually do any of the retrofitting of their existing planes to offer more premium seats, seat back TV with bluetooth, and fast internet as they’d promised. There was hand waving about supply chain.
That’s finally changing.
Southwest Airlines had a remarkably bad holiday period. As a result perhaps two million people had their travel interrupted, and the airline will report a loss for the fourth quarter. Their operations have recovered, but they have the daunting task of investing to make sure such a long tail event doesn’t repeat itself, and to convince customers to return.
Return they will, in part because there are things that Southwest Airlines does incredibly well, something that’s easily forgotten in the fog of how bad the last week and a half of 2022 was for the carrier and its customers. In fact, there are 8 reasons you should still fly Southwest Airlines.
American Airlines miles are great for redeeming on partner airlines at great value, such as Japan Airlines to Asia and Iberia to Europe. However it can be tough to use AAdvantage miles to actually fly American, without paying a big premium in miles, especially if you want to fly up front. And most people want to use American’s miles to fly domestically.
Fortunately right now there’s surprisingly good award space in premium cabins between the West Coast and Hawaii, and on American’s premium flights between New York JFK and Los Angeles. It’s a great time to jump on these redemptions, even if you only think they might be useful, because American no longer charges a fee to cancel your award and redeposit the miles.
Mexicana was one of the oldest airlines in the world when it went out of business in August 2010. The carrier had been flying to the U.S. since 1920, when it began operating Mexico City to Tuxpan to Tampico to Brownsville, Texas with a Ford Trimotor.
The carrier, partially-owned by the Mexican government, went into bankruptcy, and a great deal was revealed about how key executives used the business for tax fraud and money laundering.
Nearly five years ago Emirates started selling “in home check-in” where someone comes to you, weighs and collects your baggage, and prints your boarding passes. Then last summer they started offering this complimentary to first class passengers. And it’s stupid.
When laying out the reasons why American Airlines devaluing AAdvantage program could be bad for its business I noted financial disclosures they made to investors when raising debt backed by their loyalty program.
Taking their self-reported 52% operating margin for the program, I backed into what it cost for American Airlines to ‘produce’ a frequent flyer mile.
Japan Airlines is asking business class customers to skip meals on board, telling them it is the ethical thing to do – which must make a business class passenger choosing to eat unethical.
It’s time to get aggressive marketing the ways in which Southwest is better, and making it easy and rewarding to do business with the airline.
Emirates has completed the refresh of the first one of its Airbus A380s and is placing it into service today, January 6, as flight EK3 from Dubai to London Heathrow. The airline has a fleet of 120 A380s, though slightly more than half will receive the interior retrofit.
These planes are receiving 56 premium economy seats, as well a new color palette in business and first class.
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 »
