Airlines

Category Archives for Airlines.

74% Chance Air Travel Mask Mandate To End Before This Year’s Elections

by Gary Leff

Feb 15 2022

No matter what your position on continued masking on planes throughout the Omicron wave – that it no longer makes sense to extend the federal transportation mask mandate which currently runs through March 18, 2022.

Betting markets now give 3-1 odds that the mask mandate will be gone before the election. Prediction markets are frequently more reliable than expert commentary because well-informed observers put real money behind their arguments (it’s their revealed expectations, rather than cheap talk).

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Airlines Are Dropping First Class Cabins And Leaving Big Profit On The Table

by Gary Leff

airline cabin
Feb 15 2022

Any airline with the resources can buy a large flat seat and pay for good catering. Creating a true lifestyle brand experience creates a moat against competition – the opposite of the commodity mindset that most airlines have adopted. Rather than being unprofitable, first class therefore carries the potential to be the most profitable since it’s the most de-commoditized. And in a world where so few do it, it’s easy to get a head start.

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The King Of Low Cost Airlines Wants To Offer Cheap Transatlantic Flights, And U.S. Pilots Are Fighting It

by Gary Leff

Feb 14 2022

Bill Franke is a name that should make airline passengers shudder and yet it’s hardly known. He ran America West and hired Doug Parker to be his cost-cutting CFO.

Franke is responsible for turning Spirit Airlines into an ultra low cost carrier. He divested there and bought Frontier Airlines, turning it into a Spirit clone. And now he’s merging the two. And another one of his airlines is looking to offer transatlantic service.

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Flight Attendants ‘Forced To Work For Free’ During Boarding, And Over 100,000 People Demand Change

by Gary Leff

Feb 11 2022

There’s a big debate going on about whether flight attendants are fairly paid, based on the idea that they are generally paid only for the time flying and not for the time spent boarding an aircraft. A Change.org petition to change this has garnered over 100,000 signatures.

The petition rests on a fairly fundamental misunderstanding of how mostly-union contracts are bargained on behalf of flight attendants.

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Award Alert: West Coast – Paris Business Class Saver Awards Using AAdvantage Miles

by Gary Leff

Feb 10 2022

Right now there’s really good business class saver award inventory on one of American’s lesser-known partners. And even better it’s for a West Coast departure to Europe, which is even harder to get.

Air Tahiti Nui has good award space for two passengers in business class flying Los Angeles – Paris Charles de Gaulle in March, April, July, August, and December at a cost of 57,500 American AAdvantage miles apiece.

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