Category Archives for Airlines.
It’s a mess, but a mess that can be fixed with money. As a result if American somehow doesn’t fix it, it’s a huge failure of management. So it’s also a test of the new management team whose orders are normally to not spend a dollar more than they need to.
Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he was taking a connecting flight Friday evening and the airline (which he doesn’t name) cancelled his connection, so he insisted on refunding the segment. If things happened the way he describes, he stranded himself mid-trip in a city that wasn’t his destination, and he doesn’t ell us how he wound up making it the rest of the journey.
Along the way he offers commentary on the value of frequent flyer miles, which he estimates are worth ‘between 1 and 1.5 cents apiece’ (he’s right!) and settles on a value of 1.2 cents for the particular miles he was offered.
A three year old Emirates Airbus A380 from Dubai to Brisbane may have flown for 13 hours with a hole in its fuselage.
Flight EK430 took off from Dubai International Airport and that may be the point at which the aircraft received damage. However it wasn’t until approach into Brisbane that flight crew advised air traffic control that they suspected “they blew a tyre on takeoff” and asked for emergency response services to on standby as they arrived.
Some unscrupulous people request wheelchair assistance at the airport when they don’t need it, using their ‘injury’ for a whole bunch of benefits: skip the security line, early boarding, and even better better seats on board.
El Al is spinning off its frequent flyer program at a $500 million valuation. The entire airline, including the frequent flyer program, has a market cap of less than $180 million. They’re not alone. American’s frequent flyer program was appraised at up to $30 billion (and they borrowed $10 billion against it) while their market cap is less than $9 billion.
Spirit Airlines sent me their release indicating that tomorrow will not be the day that shareholders vote on whether to sell to Frontier Airlines.
Instead the shareholder meeting will be adjourned and reconvened on July 8. Spirit wouldn’t do this if all their ducks were lined up to gain approval for the Frontier deal that their board has endorsed.
Bernie Sanders, like all of us, has some valid gripes about air travel today. He’s come out with a set of solutions he’d like the Department of Transportation to impose through new regulation. This includes forcing airlines to skip crucial maintenance, and requiring flight attendants to work when they’re sick with Covid-19.
JetBlue’s proposed deal to acquire Spirit Airlines is better for Spirit shareholders than Frontier’s is. Spirit management supports the Frontier deal, and it will probably be approved. JetBlue is offering 40% more for Spirit Airlines than Frontier is. With Spirit’s shares falling to slightly below Frontier’s offer, the market thinks the successful suitor will be Frontier, not JetBlue.
However a Frontier deal for Spirit is actually better for consumers, even though JetBlue’s product is better than the one offered by either airline.
Virgin Atlantic is launching two positive changes for its Flying Club frequent flyer program. They’re guaranteeing to release a minimum number of award seats when loading a flight into the schedule, and they’re allowing Gold elite members to book any seat they want that’s for sale as an award ticket by spending double miles.
Somewhat counterintuitively the introduction of double miles awards without capacity controls are actually the bigger deal here for the program, I think.
Delta is running a flash sale on business class SkyMiles awards to Europe. Prices start at 148,000 miles roundtrip, which is roughly what other programs normally charge. But it can be half what Delta frequently charges, and availability is pretty good. But you have to act fast.
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 »
