Category Archives for Airlines.
Everything works well when routes don’t get cancelled and schedules don’t change in ways that make connections impossible. But when you are working through one airline to travel on another, things can go wrong. Here’s what to do about it.
A recent award travel horror story shared to Reddit seems like a great opportunity for flagging some of the risks and complexities in travel and how to handle them.
Air travel connects the world. People fly for a purpose. They’re visiting friends and family, attending to important business, and connecting. Sometimes they connect with each other, through the randomness of seat assignments. And sometimes it’s the little connections with employees along the way, because it’s one human helping out another and taking a moment engage as people.
Seven moments shared to social media with photos or video stood out to me in just twenty four hours, showing that in a single day there’s a lot of good in the air, and on the ground.
A family of 9 passengers says that American Airlines ran a schedule change, and rebooked their return flight from a different country without telling them. They checked their seat assignments online – it’s always important to garden your reservations and check that nothing has changed – and found that their return trip was all wrong (and they weren’t sitting together on the wrong flights, either!).
Three months ago a South African Airways Airbus A330 from Accra, Ghana to Johannesburg reported both engines surging while over Botswana. The aircraft, with 209 people on board, continued the final 50 minutes to Johannesburg even as surges continued on final approach.
Reportedly the airline had just changed fuel suppliers in Accra. And after water had been drained from the fuel system, the aircraft was signed off for a ferry flight back to South Africa – with no passengers – but a full complement of passengers was loaded anyway.
Delta just cares about its customers so darned much and wanted to fly them when they were interested in travel again so the airline ‘stretched’ and pushed themselves too darned hard. Now they need to give themselves a break, not hold themselves to the same standard of flying so many trips, in order to sort things out.
Here Bastian is just like the job candidate who answers the question, “what’s your greatest weakness?” with “I work too hard, and don’t focus enough on outside interests.”
American Airlines makes companion upgrades free starting Thursday. That’s officially the end of 500 mile electronic upgrades (‘stickers’).
If you have any 500 mile upgrades left in your account they’ll each be converted to 250 status-qualifying Loyalty Points. However if you have any purchased 500 mile upgrades in your account you should contact American and ask to have them converted to 5000 redeemable miles instead.
Introducing the Thompson Vantage XL seat in 2016 was fantastic in 2016 when doors in business class was still a novelty. In 2022 it’s… okay, but something of an also-ran. The seat is tight. Not quite as tight as United’s Polaris, but certainly not spacious either. In terms of passenger space it compares unfavorably to American Airlines.
In spring 2019 Virgin Atlantic unveiled a new business class product that would debut on the airline’s new Airbus A350 aircraft. It was a leap forward compared to their existing seat, but hardly revolutionary, and lacked doors.
Now Virgin has unveiled yet another new business seat which will debut on Airbus A330s. They have 16 A330-900s on order, and 3 of them are expected to be delivered between September and the end of the year. With a narrower fuselage than he A350, their old new seat wouldn’t fit and they needed another.
The federal transportation mask mandate ended two and a half months ago. Airlines quickly lifted their own mask requirements. That means passengers no longer have to wear masks, but may do so if they wish. And with the end of mask mandates you can now wear masks that are highly protective and more comfortable, but that had been banned.
When change fees were $200, a lot of customers didn’t bother using their credits. You might think that’s better for an airline but it’s not. The customer probably resented the airline they gave money to and got nothing in return (other than the right to fly on the itinerary they purchased – but that’s not usually how the customer sees it).
There’s the obvious way in which eliminating change fees fosters loyalty, and a less obvious way.
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 »
