Category Archives for Airlines.
If you call a U.S. airline expect to wait on hold. And depending on what’s happening that day, the wait can be hours. When you need help the most, because your flight was cancelled or you’re going to miss a connection, that’s when the hold times are likely to be longest – because everyone else probably needs help at the same time for the same reason.
TPG isn’t on the side of angels here, they’re both fighting over consumer eyeballs, but the service that others like TPG are providing can be a net positive. And unquestionably companies have taken enforcement of computer access laws way too far.
What American should have done was insist on a stake in the product. Award Wallet, for instance, has hundreds of thousands of airline elite customers in their database….. including the customers of American’s competitors. The smart move would be to market to those competitors’ customers, negotiated in exchange for access.
Outgoing American Airlines CEO Doug Parker made a point in his opening remarks to employees after completing the carrier’s fourth quarter earnings call this past Thursday. His remarks suggested that masks are an impediment to the return of business travel. The full return to normal is therefore going to necessarily involve lifting masking requirements.
The American Airlines flight attendants union asked the airline to cut service levels for passengers because they don’t want to work because they’re concerned about the spread of Covid-19.
Needless to say, starting mid-next week, on your next American Airlines flight in back you may be thirsty. Plan accordingly.
“Choice benefits” in the past have included things like bonus miles or confirmed international upgrades though require crediting at least 30 flights to an AAdvantage account. These benefits are earned at the 125,000 point level and above:
American has announced what these choice benefits are for status levels earned in 2022.
American Airlines has been selling miles at a base price of 2.95 cents apiece, before taxes, fees, bonuses or discounts. They’ve raised the base price of miles to 3.5 cents, even as the value of miles is lower than it used to be.
Could this be the end of first class on international routes and premium cross country flights on American Airlines? Or the introduction of a really stepped up business class, or both?
Wednesday evening American was marketing cross country flights on its premium Airbus A321T aircraft as offering “Flagship Business” and “Flagship Business Plus,” the latter instead of first class,. Indeed, the column heading where ‘First’ used to be was replaced with ‘Premier’ at aa.com. And now the change has been rolled back.
American Airlines has been clamping down on websites that work with AAdvantage member data for their customers. They made Award Wallet stop tracking member accounts and they sent a cease and desist letter to Red Ventures, which owns The Points Guy, over its TPG app which – among other things – lets customers track their frequent flyer program balances.
American sought to stop the practice, and so Red Ventures first sued American Airlines seeking declaratory relief. And now American Airlines and its loyalty subsidiary have countersued in the Northern District of Texas.
They want single tray service in international business (and first) class and reduced beverage service in coach on all flights. And they say this is to keep flight attendants safe.
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to award incentives to employees for getting exemption from vaccination requirements.
The view now is that we just need to get through Omicron. Indeed the industry is gearing up for a return to normal after the Omicron wave. There’s hope that more borders will re-open, more employees will return to office, and there’ll be a return to normal travel and then some given intertemporal substitution – that people refrained from travel for a long time, and will make up for it quickly.
Underlying this belief are several assumptions, which are very much the ‘base case’ but are far from assured.
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 »
