Category Archives for Airlines.
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.
Spirit Airlines announced that their board has unanimously rejected JetBlue’s offer to pay more for the airline than Frontier, with whom the ultra low cost carrier had entered into a sale agreement.
JetBlue’s offer involved paying more but undermining Spirit’s low cost advantage and walking away from their more profitable business model. Instead JetBlue wanted Spirit for its planes, pilots, gates and slots.
The truth is that other flight attendants are compensated based on flight length, and that’s meant to cover work done during boarding. And this how how union contracts have been designed – it’s what flight attendant representatives wanted. But there’s another element that most flight attendants don’t realize, and it’s how their own union is sticking it to them.
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 »
