Category Archives for Airlines.
According to the airline, they “sincerely apologize” for the inconvenience of the delay of flight W95749, from Gatwick to Larnaca, which they blame on late arriving aircraft and air traffic control. They do not, however, apologize for the pilot – who, if he ever tires of flying for Wizz Air- likely has a future with the Delta Air Lines social media team.
At a recent employee ‘Crew News’ meeting, a pilot asked Chief Operating Officer David Seymour what the airline is doing to improve customer satisfaction citing bottom performance in J.D. Power’s airline satisfaction survey. American Airlines is bookended at the bottom of the survey by Spirit Airlines and Frontier.
Qatar has one of the best business class product in the world in its ‘QSuites’. These are revolutionary suites with doors and movable partitions that allow two and even four passengers to travel together in their own space.
Right now there’s fantastic award availability booking for 2023. You can use this for travel from the U.S. to Doha and beyond to the Mideast, India, the Maldives and elsewhere.
Cathay Pacific will retire the Marco Polo Club brand. Instead of having a separate elite program (Marco Polo Club) and points program (Asia Miles) the two will be combined in July. This means big changes for the entry level status of the program, and potentially for their U.S. credit card as well.
American Airlines is bringing the HEAT to reduce the number of flights they cancel during major weather events. HEAT stands for Hub Efficiency Analytics Tool and they’ve been using it in Dallas Fort Worth (aka ‘Doesn’t Function Wet’) and Charlotte.
At an employee meeting this month Managing Director of the American Airlines Integrated Operations Center Steve Olson shared the details.
In a talk to American Airlines employees mid-month, Chief Operating Officer David Seymour described the new tool that the airline is using to manage gate operations in Dallas, which they’ll be tweaking for Charlotte as well.
They’re already making progress reducing the amount of time planes spend taxiing to gates and reducing delays as planes get into and out of gates. They’re even reducing the frequency that planes land and find their gates occupied. All of this adds up to less time on planes for customers, and fewer times that customers are late – which means fewer misconnections.
The once-stellar reputation of Delta Air Lines is falling as its operational reliability fades. After melting down last weekend, they’re doing the same thing again.
And Delta’s social media has had it with passengers and their impatience.
After announcing a revenue-based frequent flyer program that they’re calling a cryptocurrency they’re trying to raise money direct from the public in the form of an investment kickstarter, with the promise of free travel, elite benefits and… free booze for investors?
There are many reasons be be skeptical of the effort even if they didn’t seem to be incorporating the worst elements of businesses like Avatar Airlines which take a sixteen year old’s dream carrier off of airliners.net and marry it with an SEC criminal complaint waiting to happen.
The complimentary upgrade program has one oddball route exception. All Caribbean flights receive complimentary upgrades except one. It’s a 900 mile flight operated with an American Eagle Embraer E-175 regional jet.
Congress, at the behest of pilots unions and under the guise of safety after the Colgan Air accident, created significant barriers to becoming a pilot that were completely unrelated to the cause of that incident. Congress can fix this if they want air service to the smallest cities, precisely what gets cut as pilots are allocated to the most valuable trips, they should fix this.
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 »
