Category Archives for Airlines.
On Friday I flew an old United Airlines Boeing 737 with credit card swipe beside the screens. It had the old mostly non-functional wifi (seat back entertainment wasn’t working either), and the old small overhead bins.
American Airlines is updating its pre-arrival service in premium cross country flights – with new freshly baked on board cookies – and has two new food for sale items in coach on flights over 1300 miles.
14 airports have lost all commercial air service in the past three years, and 324 small airports have seen losses of air service averaging 30%.
While the long run trend is fewer non-stop flights in small markets, large hubs have made it economical for airlines to serve many of these markets with a connection. Now we’re seeing fewer – and in some cases no – connections.
American does very little ultra long haul flying. And Doha’s premiums cabins are consistently empty in his observation, filling up only at the last minute (presumably with nonrevenue employees and upgrades). And they can’t be making money off of just a full coach cabin with their costs. As a result there has been speculation about this route being pulled. Here’s why I don’t think that will happen in 2023.
Shark Tank start and former New York real estate broker Barbara Corcoran has a message for frequent flyers: you’re using your miles wrong, don’t upgrade or redeem for first class, and bring your own booze to drink on the plane.
American Airlines loses and delays more checked bags than competitors – at times up to 1% of bags. The airline has 3 changes to make baggage reliability better, according to Julie Rath who is American’s Senior Vice President of Airport Operations (and had a brief tenure running the AAdvantage program). She offered these comments during an employee meeting following the airline’s first quarter earnings call on Thursday.
When you check a bag with an airline, the airline is responsible for the bag even though they aren’t the only one that touches it. You may have seen the slips that TSA sometimes sticks into bags saying that they’ve opened and inspected it.
One woman shared her story of flying Delta from New York JFK to Los Angeles, only to discover that her bag had been opened and one of her packing cubes removed.
American Airlines has updated the script that gate agents are supposed to use when boarding planes. It should be the same, each and every time. The goal in streamlining the script is to help them get planes out exactly on-time, reducing the time it takes to board the aircraft, and giving passengers instructions that – if followed – help towards this goal.
United Airlines is telling its employees that they are now the world’s largest airline. They’ve sent a message from CEO Scott Kirby trumpeting this claim. But the data tells a different story.
The FAA’s Air Traffic Organization is severely understaffed with controllers. New York TRACON is less than 60% staffed with fully-trained controllers. And the government is asking airlines to reduce their summer schedules out of New York airports. Ironically the government won’t let JetBlue and American Airlines fully participate to help solve this challenge.
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 »
