Category Archives for Airlines.
JetBlue flight 2465 from Buffalo to Fort Lauderdale was delayed four hours on Wednesday morning when the aircraft’s co-pilot was flagged as possibly impaired as he went through the security checkpoint.
Police were called and the man was taken off the plane and given a breathalyzer test. He registered a blood alcohol content of .17.
President Biden is announcing tonight during the State of the Union address that the U.S. is closing its airspace to Russian aircraft.
This isn’t nearly as significant to Russia as the closure of European airspace, though it does mean that Russian carriers won’t be flying to the U.S. which was already made more difficult by the closure of Canadian airspace. But check out what Russian airlines now have to do in order to fly to places like Cancun.
American Express is sending out targeted offers – at least to Platinum cardholders, although possibly to customers with other cards – encouraging them to status match to Delta SkyMiles.
Status will last through August 31 and they will give you a level higher than what you currently have with a competitor.
Now that it’s March 1 and Loyalty Points are the new way status is earned, the American Airlines AAdvantage account site has been updated.
However they aren’t yet showing how many Loyalty Points you’ve earned so far in 2022. Some members report that some transactions are showing in their total. In my account I show zero. Worse yet, the page listing activity no longer shows full details. You need to click through each transaction one by one rather than seeing everything in a list on a single screen.
Along with the move to qualifying for elite status based on Loyalty Points rather than qualifying miles and qualifying dollars, American Airlines is eliminating 500 mile upgrade certificates and they are also processing elite upgrades earlier at the airport.
Here’s what it means and why they’re doing it.
Sunday night’s Aeroflot 124 Moscow – New York flight turned around midflight. The U.S. hasn’t banned Russian aircraft from its airspace, but it’s tough for them to get here without overflying EU and Canadian airspace. They flew 8 hours and wound up where they started.
At the same time Aeroflot 111 from Miami to Moscow made it to its destination, violating airspace restrictions. They’re accused of lying claiming that this was a humanitarian flight, rather than a standard commercial flight.
An American spokesperson told me they’d only honor business class awards in their original class of service if Qantas had business class award space available. Since of course they do not, American will only rebook in coach. And, “you can have your miles reinstated or rebook to travel once we begin offering service between LAX-SYD again in November.”
The notion that when American exits a market it will not honor reservations in their ticketed class of service on a joint venture partner has important implications, I think, for the notion of consumer benefit that they are claiming as they defend a government lawsuit against their JetBlue joint venture.
At the ‘State Of The Airline’ employee forum last month current American Airlines President and incoming CEO Robert Isom laid out his vision for the airline. It was mostly about operating reliably as the priority that matters most. One line, though, struck me at the time. I didn’t write about it. Instead it’s been tossing around in my head ever since.
I’ve written for a year that the decision on ‘returning to normal’ which includes sunsetting the transportation mask mandate requiring masks be worn in airports and on planes would be a political one. Specifically, the mandate would sunset before end of summer so that the President could declare victory over the pandemic before the midterm elections. Control of the House and Senate hang in the balance.
President Biden’s pollster’s firm now is giving Democrats this same advice.
Delta Air Lines today announced that they have suspended codeshares with SkyTeam alliance member Aeroflot, which is 57% owned by the Russian government. I’m surprised it took this long. Beyond Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson there appears to be very little sympathy for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
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 »
