Category Archives for Airlines.
Bask Bank is known for its Mileage Savings Account which awards American AAdvantage miles rather than interest – the math on this works out especially well in what’s still a low-interest rate environment.
They’ve also launched a Bask Interest Savings Account and they’ve just raised the interest rate (APY) by 56% after the recent Fed meeting.
Airlines used to regularly hand out meal vouchers during flight delays. When it was their fault, they’d cover food costs for passengers and that was expensive.
About 8 years ago, after being taken over by US Airways, American Airlines came up with a solution to save money. They’d roll out carts of snacks to gates on long delays instead of giving customers meal vouchers.
The federal transportation mask mandate was vacated and unruly passenger incidents immediately fell. That’s great news for airline crew safety. It’s great news for passengers trying to get to their destinations on time. And it’s great for airline bottom lines since it means fewer diversions and delayed passengers to reaccommodate.
Pilots are one of the few unionized work groups at Delta. They’re complaining that Delta gave non-union flight attendants a raise by adding pay for boarding time (in addition to their pre-pandemic raise, post-pandemic raise, and special profit-sharing).
However Delta cannot unilaterally change the pay of their pilots. Their pilots literally agreed to – voted on – a contract that paid more for time flying the plane and didn’t calculate pay including boarding time. Not only haven’t pilots made boarding pay a priority, they’ve chosen the current arrangement because it benefits senior union members at the expense of junior ones.
Executive Platinum, Platinum Pro and Concierge Key members have received premium economy upgrades free when they are available (and when they aren’t being upgraded to business class).
For Alaska and Hawaii routes, these complimentary premium economy upgrades at the gate are now available to all elites. Gold and Platinum members are now eligible for complimentary premium economy upgrades when listed for an upgrade to business and not clearing.
American Airlines took a $200 million stake in Brazilian carrier Gol, after Delta stole LATAM from oneworld and a pending joint venture. Delta had to divest its ownership position in Gol to pull this off.
Gol is American’s exclusive codeshare partner in Brazil, and American is Gol’s exclusive codeshare partner in the U.S. And the relationship doesn’t just come with reciprocal earning and redemption of miles. Elite customers receive benefits across the two carriers.
American Airlines flight 3729 from Charleston to Dallas – Fort Worth, an Embraer E-17t operated by wholly-owned regional carrier Envoy Air, diverted to Birmingham, Alabama on Tuesday after reportedly losing “all or part” of a winglet in turbulence.
Delta business class award space between New York JFK and Frankfurt is reasonably available between May and December 7 at the saver level. You can book these seats right now for just 39,000 points each way.
Spirit’s rejection was a gift to JetBlue which was already offering to overpay for Spirit. The “winner’s curse” was in effect, Since the market knows what Spirit is worth, in order to ‘win’ JetBlue was having to overpay. And indeed, Spirit is worth less to JetBlue than it is to Frontier.
JetBlue’s revised offer, unfortunately for their shareholders, was the same amount of money while extracting less value from the deal.
With just six seats, first class will be arranged in two rows of 3 seats (1-1-1). The suite will feature a separate seat and bed (as we’ve seen from Etihad and Singapore on the Airbus A380, and Lufthansa had at one point on its Boeing 747s). With an aisle between seats there’s no divider to bring down to share space with a traveling partner, however.
The new Qantas first class seat will feature a 32 inch HD screen, a wardrobe to store clothes after you’ve changed into pajamas and a mirror on the door. The seat will be controlled via iPad, and most innovative will be individual temperature and humidity controls.
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 »
