Category Archives for Airlines.
Sabre also provides passenger service and operations for Aeroflot. Those are not being halted. Sabre has the ability to ground Aeroflot and is not doing so.
JetBlue is bringing back fresh food to its premium cabin, and bringing back liquor to its flights starting March 15. American Airlines already brought back food to domestic first class, but its coach cabin remains dry. The airline has said it won’t bring back alcohol until the federal mask mandate is lifted.
When Southwest Airlines starting serving drinks again last month, that seemed like it would mean more pressure on American than JetBlue’s move. After all, both airlines are Dallas-based and Southwest is the traditional largest airline in the U.S. domestic market.
Delta poached JetBlue’s Head of Revenue and Planning in January. Scott Laurence was JetBlue’s architect of the “Northeast Alliance” with American Airlines before becoming Delta’s Vice President of Network Planning.
It was a shocking move. The knowledge he was taking with him of American-JetBlue strategy sent shockwaves. It’s the alliance between American and JetBlue that sets up the two to compete against Delta. The Department of Justice, in part at Delta’s behest, is suing to stop it. And Delta poached one of the key insiders who could help in that fight. And then… in February Laurence was gone from Delta.
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.
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 »
