Category Archives for Airlines.
I have offered many focused criticisms of American Airlines over the past several years. I’ve long been of the belief that there is no U.S. airline with more potential to be better than it is today. But in the interest of fairness and balance I wanted to offer 5 reasons to be genuinely excited about American Airlines. They are the airline I fly most, and I’ve been at least an Executive Platinum member of their AAdvantage program for more than a decade.
They’re considering putting doors on their narrowbody lie flat business class seats. And this seat would balance their desire for a top shelf product without taking up a lot of real estate on the plane – they could literally manage to offer less than 35 inches of pitch (distance from the same point on two seats) because of the angling of the seats even as they do just one seat on each side of the aisle since each seat turns into a bed facing outward at an angle from window to the aisle.
The seat would basically back up against the window. That means passengers would all ‘have’ windows but it wouldn’t be easy to look out the window. Instead their back would largely face the window with their feet facing the aisle. Seats would be positioned at an angle in a herringbone pattern. The Collins Aurora seat resembles the Thompson VantageSolo seat which JetBlue uses for their new Mint product.
Boeing is delivering 787s again and American Airlines has 25 of the 787-9 variant originally slated to start entering the fleet in 2023, but delayed. These 787-9s are exciting because American Airlines will debut a new business class seat with doors on this aircraft, and the plane will have more premium seats, and fewer seats overall.
U.S. airlines agreed not to buy back stock until September 30, 2022 as part of their government bailouts during the pandemic. It would have been unseemly to pick taxpayer pockets and immediately turn around and distribute those same funds to shareholders.
Now that the buyback restriction is about to end, unions don’t want airlines to spend money that way, arguing that the funds should go into the operation instead (paying workers more, natch).
Having AAdvantage in the same group as revenue management would make sense if the goal were for AAdvantage to gain access to more saver award inventory. That hasn’t been the trajectory at American, which has focused on buying seats outside of traditional saver buckets and more making additional inventory (‘web saver’) available to customers based on prevailing fares.
Instead the explanation for the move is, “Adding the AAdvantage team to this organization will make sure our AAdvantage members are able to unlock benefits across the entirety of our commercial programming.” Allowing AAdvantage members to ‘unlike benefits across the entirely of the airline’s commercial offerings’ sounds more like merchandising, monetizing the member base. Great offers can still be value-add, of course. We’ll have to wait to see how this evolves in practice.
American Airlines is the only airline offering first class in addition to business class on some cross country flights. They do this with a dedicated fleet of Airbus A321T aircraft. However this special fleet, and special product, seem unlikely to last.
American Airlines will be adding a row of seats to their Bombardier CRJ-900 regional jets operated by wholly-owned carrier PSA Airlines. These aircraft will go from a current 76 seats to 80 seats, but one of those seats will be blocked off in order to comply with the airline’s pilot contract.
An Airbus A321 from Madrid to Beirut operated by SkyTeam member Middle East Airlines was intercepted by Greek F-16 fighter jets after the pilot of August 10th’s flight 242, son of the airline’s Chairman and Director General, became non-responsive to air traffic control after signaling a distress code. Nothing was wrong, and the flight’s captain may have simply failed to communicate on the correct frequency.
Following the change to my account status, from Executive Platinum to ConciergeKey, I received a welcome email and then a phone call thanking me for my business. I was told to expect a welcome kit in about 3 weeks. In total it took 17 days.
On Friday I received an email that I had a Fedex package coming from “Specialty Print Communications” and that it would arrive by Tuesday. I googled them and saw they did work for American Airlines, so I knew this had to be my ConciergeKey package.
The Association of Flight Attendants – Communications Workers of America (AFA-CWA) is trying to organize flight attendants at Delta. They are promising more money, less work and a pony. It costs them nothing to make promises, which are almost certainly not true. In reality, Delta’s cabin crew will pay for union representation, they won’t make as much money as they will under Delta’s unique model in the industry, and their work lives will be worse.
Every Delta flight attendant should ask, are cabin crew represented by AFA-CWA actually happier and better off at the myriad of airlines where the union represents them now – like United Airlines, Spirit, Frontier, and Mesa?
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 »
