Category Archives for Airlines.
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly tested positive for Covid-19 “after returning home” from testifying in front of the Senate Commerce Committee with the CEOs of United Airlines and American Airlines, and an Executive Vice President of Delta. Flight attendants union head Sara Nelson was also there, and she reports speaking directly with Kelly after the hearing.
At Congressional hearings this week, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said that masks provide little incremental benefit in air travel given the safety of the aircraft environment. American Airlines CEO Doug Parker chimed in, “I concur.” And has since been walking that back, though over the summer when virus prevalence was low he and the CEOs of United and Southwest were talking about ending the mask mandate.
So should we still be wearing masks on planes?
The best way to track and manage frequent flyer accounts for many years has been Award Wallet. You add your account information and they let yo know when your balance changes. They let you know when your flight plans change – from flight numbers and times to seats. They track airline fee credits,, free hotel nights, and suite upgrades. And they let you know if miles in a program are close to expiration.
American Airlines has told Award Wallet that they can no longer do this with AAdvantage accounts or American reservations. The position American Airlines is taking is going to make the lives of members and passengers harder, and it’s going to mean less engagement in the AAdvantage program.
Here are three things that I didn’t cover separately from last week’s employee meeting with American Airlines President and CEO-designate Robert Isom, along with several other executives that seemed noteworthy or otherwise interesting to me.
American Airlines partner and oneworld member Finnair is offering up to a 100% bonus on purchased miles, and buying miles also earns elite status miles. Through December 27 you can buy miles for an award ticket and become a mid-tier or top tier elite without flying.
Those of you who booked Singapore Airlines Suites from the U.S. to Frankfurt or onward to Singapore will be thrilled to know that Singapore not only plans to operate the Airbus A380 on this route but that starting March 27, 2022 they’ll be operating the A380 with the new cabins which means new Suites.
Unfortunately availability doesn’t look nearly as good as it did 5 days ago. Nonetheless many of you will be excited for the first-time introduction of new cabin to the U.S. This is absolutely one of the best products in the sky. Debates between this and the new Emirates first class and ANA first class are fun (please don’t bring something like Air France first into this debate, their ground experience in Paris notwithstanding).
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.)
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 »
