Category Archives for Airlines.
Seattle will become the primary American Airlines Asian gateway. American explains that they make money when there’s little competition in the schedule. And they perform poorly when they have to compete against Asian carriers. Here’s the future of the LAX hub, and the airline’s Asia flying.
This is a case where customers actually benefit, competitors don’t like it, and whether the Justice Department realizes it or not they’re carrying water for cronyist corporate interests and not passengers.
At an American Airlines employee question and answer session last week, a flight attendant asked airline President Robert Isom about customers booking away from the airline because of its inferior international premium cabin inflight product compared to its partners.
American isn’t just bringing back business class lounges and first class dining. Better inflight meals are coming soon. And the airline’s President promised a surprising standard to hold them to going forward.
At an internal American Airlines employee question and answer session last week, airline President Robert Isom outlined President Biden’s executive orders on vaccination as they apply to employers like American, as well as other vaccination rules.
One pilot asked a question to the airline President about his reluctance to get vaccinated, saying he’s neither an anti-vaxxer nor a conspiracy theorist.
British Airways elite members whose “Tier Point collection” (12 month member year) end date is between January – March 2022 will have their status extended for another year. Elites will have access to ‘pre-flight dining’ in lounges where this is offered regardless of class of service.. And Gold Guest List members will have access to British Airways Concorde Rooms.
On Saturday morning Air France flight AF393 from Beijing to Paris burst a pipe in the passenger cabin, reported as an ‘explosion’, which forced the Boeing 777-300 to turn back around and land.
This United Airlines sports charter provides perhaps the most graphic visualization of why weight and balance matters on a mainline jet. after arriving with USC Trojans in advance of their game against the Washington State Cougars.
Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza told an interesting story about trying to figure out whether a new route would be profitable.
In normal times airlines have great data – required and reported by the federal government – on a sample of US ticket purchases that show the number of people flying a given route and what price. But there are cases where this data isn’t available, and they had to look at… alternative sources of data to decide whether or not a route made sense.
American Airlines has updated its Contract of Carriage, the adhesion contract you agree to when buying a ticket, to detail new reasons you might be banned from flying the airline based on your behavior.
One of these new reasons is downright metaphysical.
Positive Passenger/Bag Matching (“PPBM”) was common in Europe before the United States, though programs developed here in the years following the the bombing of Pan Am flight 103. It means that the passenger and their bag has to travel on the same flight. If a passenger offloads from the aircraft, the baggage has to be removed also.
The idea there is that for security reasons you don’t want a passenger putting something on the aircraft (a checked bag) without tying their own life to its contents.
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 »
