Category Archives for Airlines.
The Senate held a hearing full of mock outrage where Senators got to ask ill-informed questions of airline CEOs, and those CEOs got to give disingenuous answers about nearly $100 billion in taxpayer bailouts received during the pandemic.
There’s some truth in the grandstanding, but legislators should move beyond that and take real steps that would improve air travel in America.
If you were going to buy from Wine.com or CVS anyway these are incredible deals, and maybe worth doing even if you weren’t going to. MovieClub was profitable on its own, but the charity offer if you had it was more lucrative and you probably didn’t want the MovieClub product. Vinesse wines are terrible (in my experience) but again miles worth more than the purchase price. Barnes & Noble effectively got you a rebate of the full value of a book (or other) purchase in the form of miles. And this isn’t the first time they ran a sextuple miles offer, they did it at the end of 2019 also.
All of which is to say this bonus highlights SimplyMiles and makes it something worth checking more often than I would have before.
American Airlines named its new senior leadership team yesterday. With Robert Isom ascending to CEO when Doug Parker becomes non-executive chairman on March 31, there’s a reshuffle at the top.
American Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja laid out a new vision for the carrier, as part of the announcement of a new senior leadership team that comes with Doug Parker’s stepping down as CEO and Robert Isom taking that position at the end of March.
It’s a customer-focused vision which isn’t something we’ve seen clearly articulated at American Airlines since US Airways took over. (“Caring for people on life’s journey” is too non-specific and milquetoast to count.)
Selecting a provider for seat back entertainment and power is a step forward in preparing for new business class seats on aircraft that will be coming into the fleet.
When American Airlines announced that Chairman and CEO Doug Parker would become non-executive Chairman on March 31, 2022 and current President Robert Isom would take over as CEO and join the board, I wrote that Executive Vice President of People and Communications Elise Eberwein would step down as well. That’s now official.
Robert Isom has named his new leadership team and it’s interesting as much for what hasn’t been stated as what has.
Los Angeles is surprisingly lightly served from Memphis, with Delta offering non-daily service and Allegiant flying the route. There’s no United or American flights. Memphis – Las Vegas has limited service, from Allegiant and Frontier. And Memphis – Orlando has very limited service from Southwest and Frontier. All are routes where Spirit has a shot. And, for their strategy, if the fares are low enough people will come from all over.
I’ve always known that the key to award travel is flexibility. The best deals are on seats that are going to go unsold. An airline doesn’t always know what seats those are, and may play it conservative not releasing award space until very close to departure. And even then they may be reluctant, worried that someone might redeem miles instead of spending big money on a ticket.
Right now uncertainty is even greater for airlines. How many people will be traveling? Will there be any business travelers, or will it be all leisure? Will there be restrictions on actually flying to a destination? Or perhaps restrictions on the number of flights a week that can be offered?
Virgin Australia is strategically important because they’re one of two significant airlines in Australia. Qantas is closely tied through a joint venture with American Airlines. So most airlines outside of the oneworld alliance (and Emirates) go looking for domestic feed for their long haul Australia routes with their competitor, Virgin Australia.
Virgin Down Under has been linked with Delta Air Lines through a joint business venture, leaving United Airlines in the cold. Its Australia flights have largely had to survive on local market passengers, rather than connecting people from all over Australia. That’s changing.
American Airlines launched its New York JFK – Delhi flight, marking its return to India, but it’s been plagued by massive problems. They haven’t been granted the right to fly over Russia, and so the flight takes two hours longer than flights on other airlines. That means more fuel and more crew and the plane has frequently had to take a diversion – further lengthening the trip and inconveniencing passengers.
Right now fares would have to be a lot lower for anyone to want to fly American over even Air India, let alone United from Newark. Addressing the issues has been a company-wide priority for the airline.
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 »
