Category Archives for Airlines.
Chris Matyszczyk is known for taking my airline leaks and sensationalizing them. Here, though he takes word of American Airlines business class seats coming with doors on the airline’s new delivery Boeing 787-9s and uses that to pull his very best Christopher Elliott, which is to say taking a travel story he doesn’t understand and doing his best to turn it into an allegory about class warfare and socialism of the North Korean variety.
According to the commentator, American sees that they’re overbooked on the day of travel, delays that flight for a long period so passengers make other plans, and then they no longer have to involuntarily deny anyone boarding.
There’s a lot of competitive pressure now to do more than just Polaris for United, especially as that carrier pursues a strategy that seeks to attract premium business. And the planning cycle for a new business product, from selection to production to installation across a fleet, is many years-long. So it’s not surprising that United is now planning for a new business seat with doors.
It’s political fear, ultimately, and not scientific judgment that dictates when the mandate gets lifted. So the relevant question is whether two weeks from now the Administration’s fear of the midterms will outweigh their fear of ‘being wrong’ about the direction of the pandemic and being blamed for lifting a restriction that did little to alter the course of the pandemic in the first place.
Alcohol is about to return to American Airlines coach on Monday, and the carrier’s flight attendants union – the Association of Professional Flight Attendants – has demanded that a two drink limit be imposed on passengers.
In addition to better meals (and more improvements starting today even that I covered last week), a new business class suite coming and new premium economy seats, and elite status that’s easier to earn, American Airlines is testing free high speed wifi for passengers over the next six weeks.
United, Delta and Southwest all sell alcohol in coach. American Airlines has been the lone holdout, consistently saying they wouldn’t bring alcohol back into the main cabin while the mask mandate was in place. Former CEO Doug Parker emphasized that he believed adding alcohol into tense confrontations over masks was a bad idea.
The mask mandate was scheduled to lift April 18, and not coincidentally American has been scheduled to bring back alcohol sales and coursed meals on longer flights up front. Now that the mask mandate is being extended again, what happens to American’s plans for booze?
The CDC will extend the mask mandate by two weeks. The goal is to “monitor for any observable increase in severe virus outcomes as cases rise in parts of the country..out of abundance of caution.”
While CDC mask guidance suggests nearly the entire country doesn’t need to wear masks indoors, the only real remaining mask mandates are flying (and other transportation) and in some backward jurisdictions for 2-4 year olds in preschools.
It would be a shame to see Flagship First Class disappear from American Airlines. I’d far rather see them invest in a truly first class product. They have Flagship First Class Dining, Five Star service on the ground, and aircraft selling the product already. And it’s a market that few airlines compete against them to service. Modest tweaks would go a long way, but unfortunately signs point in the opposite direction.
As travel returns, airlines have been looking to juice their elite ranks. One way they do that is by poaching customers from competitors. It’s hard to attract a customer used to elite treatment and asking them to start with your business at the bottom. So giving them an easy path to switch makes sense.
Now another airline has entered the fray. LATAM will match the status of customers with any other frequent flyer program of an airline operating in the region.
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 »
