Category Archives for Airlines.
With the extension of the mask mandate into January 2022, Southwest Airlines told employees that it’s not bringing back alcohol this year. No word yet on what happens to expiring drink coupons.
While alcohol won’t be served on board, mixers will be as a standalone starting next month because the airline had planned to bring back cocktail service and had to order these ahead of time.
Early this morning Delta flight 1732 from Charleston, South Carolina to Atlanta pushed back from the gate – with more passengers on board than seats. The Boeing 737-900 has 180 passenger seats, but there were 182 passengers on board.
The aircraft returned to the gate quickly to offload the extra passengers, but this is uncommon enough I tried to find out how this happened and why the aircraft was moving back from the gate without everyone on board being seated.
American Airlines is starting to bring back hots nuts, at least on some long haul business class flights. My domestic first class flights over the past 10 days still had packaged nuts.
Soon you won’t have to buy your own first class nut mix online anymore, and bring the nuts on board yourself for a flight attendant to heat up.
Over the summer I wrote a guide to the mind-numbingly complicated differences between an American Airlines trip credit, travel voucher, flight credit and gift card, including a helpful internal grid that the carrier’s employees use.
American has been replacing paper vouchers with ‘trip credits’ which allow payment towards an adult passenger fare on American and American Airlines codeshares only. These can be used as partial payment towards a ticket (topped off with a credit card) or partially used towards full payment of a ticket, with residual amounts emailed to the passenger. Trip credits can also be used to book yourself an extra seat.
After 10 p.m. Friday night the House dropped their 600 page infrastructure reconciliation package. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, just the 41 page summary.
U.S. airlines last week increased their commitment to use biofuels. It’s no wonder why
American Airlines updated its rules (‘contract of carriage’) to make clear that it has almost no responsibility to you, the customer, when they delay or cancel flights.
The President of the AAdvantage program is leaving American Airlines after just over a year in his current role. His farewell message to employees has been leaked.
President Biden has issued an order telling the TSA to double fines for passengers refusing to wear masks on planes and other forms of transportation. This is purely symbolic, because fines – which start at $250 for a first offence – are rarely imposed let alone paid.
The President demanded that air travelers show some respect and that this is the reason for the increased fines.
President Biden on Thursday announced sweeping national vaccine mandates, which are still to be written. Timing remains uncertain, but federal workers will have to be vaccinated. So will federal contractors. And most health care workers. And anyone employed by a company with over 100 workers (though weekly testing will be an alternative). Federal workers, of course get a 75 day grace period and only then will begin the ‘standard H.R. process’ such as it is.
This announcement puts a move made by United Airlines just the day before in a new light. United Airlines was specifically called out as an example by President Biden.
There’s a certain genre of travel article that gives advice on how to upgrade your flight, with advice that’s nearly always wrong or at least highly misleading.
It usually begins with how you dress, but one Bloomberg piece took the art form to a new level telling you just to mention the words “revenue management” and airlines have to give you a business or first class seat. You’d be better off trying to upgrade by gifting the pilot of your flight a dependable work mule, or dressing up as a mimosa (because alcohol is free up front).
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 »
