Category Archives for Airlines.
American AAdvantage and World of Hyatt have a useful partnership that allows American status members to earn 1 AAdvantage mile per dollar spent with Hyatt, and Hyatt elites to earn 1 Hyatt point per dollar spent on American flights. In addition they offer regular status challenges to each others’ members.
The latest status opportunity for American Airlines elites with Hyatt ends Wednesday. There’s a new opportunity for Hyatt elites with American.
United is running a sale on coach international award travel that lets elites and co-brand cardmembers book Australia awards from just 40,000 miles roundtrip, as well as discounting numerous other destinations up to 50%, when you book today while lesser discounts will remain through December 2.
Singapore Airlines frequently makes plenty of award space available towards the end of its booking calendar. If you’re searching 9 or more months in advance you have a good shot at finding a plethora of options. Right now though their award availability is exceptional across several routes, both from the U.S. to Asia and also from the U.S. to Europe.
For instance, San Francisco – Singapore non-stop has the floodgates completely open between July and October, not just for the normal 2 passengers where you’ll frequently see space but for many more than that.
Only 14% of passengers on a given flight have an AAdvantage credit card. That’s a huge opportunity to grow the card portfolio. The people most likely to be interested in the American Airlines credit card are those already flying American Airlines. But when the announces are made on redeye flights, or before 8 a.m., that’s a huge tax on customers.
Biffle didn’t want to appear customer-unfriendly, and wasn’t willing to aggressively defend their ultra low cost business model.
Most Americans are used to turning off the cell phones in flight, and calling over cell networks usually doesn’t work in the air anyway. But several airlines around the world do allow it, and provide it as a service. And for years planes had Airfones that allowed air-to-ground calling for a fee. There’s very little conflict between passengers when this is allowed.
Now Europe is preparing for 5G service on planes that would make it possible for airlines to permit use of phones in the air the way they’re used anywhere else.
Airline call center hold times often got long before the pandemic, one of the more popular features I’ve covered is ways around long hold times – like calling American Airlines foreign call centers, or ringing up Delta’s close-in travel hotline.
But you can always wait – whether it’s an hour, five hours or 40 hours – to reach an agent to help sort out a problem with your ticket, when your flight is cancelled or maybe your reservation just didn’t get ticketed properly. Always, at least, except at Frontier Airlines which has just eliminated telephone customer service.
A passenger’s pet is supposed to remain under their control and not come out of the carrier inflight. Some crews enforce that more aggressively than others. And on a recent Southwest flight, one French bulldog came out – and wandered around the aircraft.
This went on long enough, and the bulldog made it far enough around the aircraft, that flight attendants made an announcement asking whose dog it was? And nobody answered. Eventually, it turned out, that the dog wandered away while its owner was asleep inflight.
In 2015 Delta Air Lines made a $450 million investment in Shanghai-based China Eastern Airlines. That left fellow SkyTeam member Guangzhou-based China Southern Airlines out in the cold. Two years later, American Airlines followed with a $200 million investment (for a 2.76% stake) in Chinese state-controlled China Southern.
China Southern left SkyTeam. They introduced AAdvantage mileage-earning and redmeption and entered into a joint venture with British Airways. BA’s largest shareholder, Qatar Airways, took a 5% stake in China Southern as well.
For years the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), the major pilots union, has lobbied for federal rules that make it difficult to become a pilot. Fewer pilots keeps wages high, and gives unions leverage during contract negotiations – they can’t just be replaced if they strike (or if an airline were to lock them out). But with a shortage of pilots, some of those rules have come under scrutiny.
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 »
