Category Archives for Airlines.
A Turkish Airlines Istanbul – Barcelona flight was forced to turn back after sensors went off on the aircraft – determined to have been caused by the smell emitted from durian fruit in the cargo hold.
Southwest Airlines flight 3923 from Havana to Fort Lauderdale experienced a bird strike on climb out from runway six. The Boeing 737 MAX’s right engine “emitted three loud bangs and streaks of flames.” The engine caught fire and the passenger cabin filled with smoke.
There’s an old saying that there’s only two kinds of luggage, carry on and lost. The truth is it’s much more complicated than that, as video of American Airlines baggage handlers at Dallas – Fort Worth shoving bags onto the tarmac shows.
According to schedule data from Cirium Diio Mi, American Airlines is the largest U.S. (and world) airline by flights and seats flown, but United Airlines is the largest in March schedules by seat miles flown. United flies big planes farther.
Two separate American Airlines passengers shared stories of being forced to sleep in the airport after flight delays over the weekend. They may have made a basic travel error.
Consumer advocates have pushed for the federal government to mandate more seat width and legroom for passengers. The Department of Transportation can’t do this by fiat, but they’d hoped to argue that airlines pack to many people into planes and that this is unsafe; that if a plane needed to evacuate it couldn’t do so quickly enough (90 second standard).
American Airlines flight attendants have been working towards a new contract since before the pandemic. The union says they’re far apart, and that they have filed for federal mediation. That’s the first step towards a strike.
Airlines publish their schedules nearly a year in advance, but the schedules that they publish are just placeholders. They are selling tickets for flights that are not what they intend to actually fly.
While American Airlines has been selling its summer schedule for 8 months, they only finalized what it would actually be last weekend.
Thursday was a tough day for Southwest Airlines employee culture. Flight attendants picketed the airline, while pilots walked out – again – on an employee rally, though possibly to their own detriment. They missed an incredible performance.
Some airlines just give call priority, others give dedicated agents, and there can be a tradeoff. If dedicated agents are overwhelmed sometimes you just want to get through to someone. During actual high call volume periods an airline might roll over its elite members on hold to the top of the general reservations queue.
Such dynamic call handling makes sense. At American Airlines, though, Platinum Pro members’ calls get priority but will now roll over into general reservations instead of to dedicated elite agents for international bookings according to an internal airline memo.
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 »
