Category Archives for Airlines.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian as an op-ed in the Washington Post advocating for a federal No Fly List for ill-behaved passengers. What’s striking about the piece is how dismissive it seems to civil liberties concerns and the rule of law, and how little self-awareness there is over steps Delta itself has failed to take to address the problems their crew face in the air. The No Fly List probably won’t make much difference in any case.
Real meals are back in American Airlines first class which is to say we no longer suffer from shrink-wrapped turkey or pimiento cheese sandwiches.
Earlier in the month hot meals returned to first class on flights of 1500 miles or longer. The roll out went surprisingly smoothly. And now meals – albeit a charcuterie plate or vegetarian sandwich on pretzel croissant at lunch – are returning to flights 900-1499 miles in distance. American is choosing to focus on the dessert.
There’s a new award search tool that automates a lot of the hard work in putting together an award redemption, offers fairly comprehensive results, and comes at a reasonable price. You can even try it free with no commitment using promo code VFTW. There’s no benefit to me if you do, but I like the product.
An American Airlines flight attendant new hire was caught snoozing (supposedly for a few moments) on a training flight while properly seated in a passenger seat. A working crewmember photographed the trainee and sent it in to management.
The new hire, a foreign-language speaker, was fired just a couple of days before graduation. And this has been highly controversial among American Airlines flight attendants who say it brief naps happen all the time.
2-22-22 is pretty cool. Indeed the whole week’s date reads the same forwards and backwards. American Airlines is celebrating with bonus miles, and United with an award travel discount.
Qatar Airways Privilege Club is dropping ‘QMiles’ and adopting Avios as its currency in late March, with points transferring 1:1 into the new program. This is potentially huge for earning points in Qatar’s program, and may be a huge win for members of other Avios programs like British Airways Executive Club and Iberia Avios as well.
Sara Nelson, head of the AFA-CWA flight attendants union, is an influential labor leader with juice in the Democratic Party. While she was instrumental in securing bailouts for the airline industry, she doesn’t always get what she wants – Nelson was an advocate for a ban on leisure travel during the pandemic.
Nonetheless, Nelson’s AFA-CWA is pushing for an extension of the federal transportation mask mandate which currently runs through March 18. And she’s joined by the union representing cabin crew at American Airlines.
American Airlines is suspending or delaying Seattle – London and Bangalore, Dallas _ Santiago and Tel Aviv, Miami – Sao Paulo, and Los Angeles – Sydney. They’re blaming delays in the delivery of Boeing 787-8s for this, a result of production and regulatory issues faced by the airframe manufacturer.
They’ll get compensation from Boeing – covering money they’d have made with these planes, and they don’t even need to fly! – but the truth is that the lack of available aircraft is at least as much American’s fault, maybe more so than Boeing’s.
You may have to wait in long lines (with all other passengers) to get the room – if you can get an employee to help you, and if the systems they use have any rooms to offer. And when you finally get the room that’s being offered, it may not be up to your standards. Here’s a better way.
27 year old Miami-based American Airlines flight attendant Tori Panopoulos has breast cancer and is scheduled for a double mastectomy on March 1. She has a GoFundMe and is looking to raise $10,000 because of the time she’ll need to take off for treatment.
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 »
