Category Archives for Airlines.
This past weekend American’s operation melted down, along with other airlines including Southwest, Delta, and JetBlue. Once again the flight attendants union reports that crew had no hotels, and even worse that the airline – which was cancelling flights due to lack of crew – didn’t even keep track of where their flight attendants were to reassign them to trips to get customers home.
Star Alliance member ANA Mileage Club has a rare status match offer to make competitor program members elites through March 31, 2023.
This will be useful for many members because mid-tier status with ANA is Star Alliance Gold status, and that comes with lounge access when flying Star Alliance airlines – even when flying United Airlines domestically. Put another way, it’s akin to a free United Club membership.
Air France flight 11 from New York JFK to Paris had alarm sounds in the cockpit and one of the pilots called out “Stop! Stop!” several times on Tuesday morning as it descended through 1500 feet on final approach.
The 17 year old Boeing 777-300 reportedly did not respond to commands. The crew managed to execute a go around as it hit 1150 feet, after veering significantly to the left.
Spirit Airlines has been expected to merge with Frontier Airlines, in a deal announced two months ago. But today JetBlue stepped in with an offer 40% higher than Frontier’s to acquire Spirit.
Here, JetBlue explains its rationale and its plans to employees in an internal communication that was shared with View From The Wing.
Two months ago Frontier announced a deal to acquire Spirit Airlines creating a powerhouse ultra low cost airline.
Over the last several days rumors became clear that JetBlue would announce Boston – London Heathrow service today, using slots they’ve just leased from Qatar Airways. Well, there’s no announcement yet but they’ve front-run their press release by loading the flights into the schedule. And it’s actually more than expected.
Two business class award seats are available a majority of days that the flight operates, between its launch October 5 and the end of the published schedule at the beginning of March.
Long telephone hold times are the new normal when trying to reach an airline. They shed reservations agents during the pandemic. At American Airlines reservations agents were moved to the airport. And today’s travelers – predominantly leisure customers – call the airline more than business travelers did.
Add in weather and other problems and hold times spiral out of control. This past weekend we were seeing 5 and even 9 hour hold times to reach an American Airlines agent. Fortunately there are workarounds.
Over the weekend the operation of Southwest, American, Spirit, JetBlue and Delta all melted down. There was bad weather in Florida, and some IT issues, but things were systematically worse than one would expect even given these issues. United was relatively spared.
Getting through to airlines was nearly impossible. Delta has recently made it harder.
To much fanfare American AAdvantage announced that its elite members would have access to JetBlue extra legroom ‘Even More’ seats if available at check-in.
In fact it is not available to AAdvantage elites at check-in 24 hours prior to departure, it is only available at the airport when booking codeshares.
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 »
