Category Archives for Airlines.
The Southwest Airlines pilots union is suing the airline for, it says, making unilateral changes to pilot pay and working conditions without bargaining with the union. That sounds bad, because we know there’s a union contract, but let’s dig a little deeper.
If you want to experience truly crazy, read the comments on airline Facebook posts sometime. If you want a slightly higher level of discourse, but still get a sampling of what it’s like for the median traveler, reader “tweets & replies” on an airline’s twitter account.
Sometimes when I have a few spare moments I’ll scroll through American Airlines, United and Delta just to see what’s out there.
Here’s why it doesn’t surprise me at all that Spirit Airlines says they were conned out of about a million dollars by two employees and a vendor working in cahoots.
Single agent boarding is a disaster. The one overwhelmed agent can’t manage boarding and last minute upgrades, clearing last minute standby passengers, and helping customers change seats – let alone answering questions from nervous flyers.
Perhaps even more importantly they can’t manage all the tasks that are part of departure while also scrutinizing carry on bag sizes (American is asking them to now charge to gate check oversized bags) and observe passengers who may already be drunk or under the influence of a substance which means that single agent boarding contributes to greater conflict on board the aircrat and potential flight diversions, too.
Large organizations have a tendency become bloated and sclerotic. It’s striking that American Airlines cut 30% of its management workforce, $500 million per year in payroll, and has returned to operating most of its flights.
That naturally raises an interesting question, what were they carrying all that staff for in the first place? Shouldn’t they have eliminated these same positions years ago? That would never have worked, and they’re seeing now why it didn’t work so well this time either.
At this past week’s Crew News employee forum with American Airlines CEO Doug Parker, a pilot asked if there was one thing Parker could change tomorrow about the airline, just getting it done so it’s different, what would it be?
Doug Parker says that American Airlines has been investigating 1 in every 300,000 passengers for an airline ban – about two people per day that they “have to decide if they can ever fly American Airlines or not.” That’s a five-fold increase.
Chief Operating Officer David Seymour shared the plan for what’s next: getting government to crack down on airport alcohol sales.
Brian Znotins, American’s Vice President of Network and Schedule Planning, laid out the airline’s vision for Philadelphia – which is many ways is what is was before the pandemic. Even though American will be able to support more transatlantic flying from New York JFK with their JetBlue partnership, Philadelphia will remain their primary connecting gateway to Europe.
And with smaller and more fuel efficient Airbus A321XLRs coming into the fleet they’ll be able to serve summer seasonal Europe destinations year-round – and more destinations than they’ve served in Europe as well.
This opinion’s key passage makes the exact argument I’ve offered on this site for why CDC authority – on which the TSA mask rule relies – isn’t as broad as the administration claims and upon the mask rule rests.
If an airline’s agents can’t make sense of a policy it is probably too complicated a policy.
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 »
