Category Archives for Airlines.
Star Alliance member Scandinavian Airlines, commonly known as SAS, is launching two new airlines-within-an-airline. They will both operate under the SAS brand, and won’t be marketed differently to consumers. However they’ll be separate companies with separate operating certificates
Senator Chuck Schumer good-naturedly quips that the most dangerous place in Washington D.C. is between himself and a TV camera.
However it looks like Schumer has a West Coast competitor in California Attorney General Rob Bonta who has rushed to join the Justice Department’s lawsuit against American Airlines and JetBlue over its Northeast alliance which covers Boston and New York, because reasons.
American Airlines was reluctant to fly to India for years (after dropping its own Chicago – Delhi service) in part because they lacked a partner in the country. After losing its partnership with Jet Airways to Delta, it had no way good way to feed traffic to and from whatever city it flew to.
Now their entire strategy of relying primarily on a limit set of partners has changed, and they’ve acquired a new partner in India to add connectivity for both of the new routes American plans to launch there this year.
When I was a kid growing up in New York, baggage claim checks were required when leaving the airport with your luggage. I used to only see this at New York-area airports. I helped prevent people from picking up the wrong bag, and also prevent someone from intentionally taking a bag that didn’t belong to them. I haven’t seen that process in a U.S. airport in many years, and of course New York isn’t the city that it used to be when Ed Koch was mayor where this really was necessary.
Maybe that would have stopped two men who have been charged with stealing over $550,000 from U.S. airlines by making false lost luggage claims since 2015.
U.S. residents who are airline elite frequent flyers can get free Air Canada Aeroplan elite status for the rest of 2021, and keep that status for the 2022 program with by booking and flying just one roundtrip on Air Canada (or Air Canada Express or Rouge) by January 15, 2022.
This is huge for anyone with elite status and transferable credit card points, or anyone who also flies United.
Singapore Airlines will re-start it’s ‘fifth-freedom’ routes between New York and Frankfurt, and between San Francisco and Hong Kong, which each flight continuing on to Singapore. These flights will return beginning November 2. This will mean bringing the airline up to about two-thirds of its pre-Covid U.S. flying, and the airline has re-iterated its plan to restart other U.S. services including Seattle – Singapore non-stop and Houston – Manchester – Singapore as well.
Pilots are already treated differently by government mandates during the pandemic. Pilots aren’t allowed to fly within 48 hours of taking a vaccine shot due to potential side effects. And pilots are not required to wear face masks while in the cockpit.
The Biden administration executive order directing OSHA to introduce a vaccine mandate on companies with 100+ employees includes an expected alternative means of compliance in the form of regular Covid-19 testing. While United Airlines is not permitting this, a fear of losing pilots would seem to be enough reason why American Airlines would embrace this alternative.
At the start of the month American Airlines updated its rules to make clear that they would not reimburse hotel stays you book yourself when your flights are severely delayed or cancelled (you have to wait for them to give you a hotel room if you want them to cover it) and to say they don’t have any obligation to get you to your destination – they can just refund your ticket if they prefer.
Now they’re updating their rules again to further limit your right to a refund in the event of delays of over 4 hours.
Anti-customer policies adopted under the mantra of self-preservation are no longer necessary. It’s time to revert to pre-pandemic refund rules. A three hour flight change means not giving customers what they paid for, and passengers should be entitled to their money back.
Passengers will make ingenious use of the limited amenities offered to them on a plane, whether it’s plugging a sewing machine into seat power to make curtains or drying underwear using the air vent above a seat.
But what if you don’t have enough outlets for your electronics?
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 »
