Category Archives for Airlines.
Laying out what an endemic Covid-19 future looks like, President Biden’s former White House Sr Advisor for COVID Response suggests that a federal transportation mandate should become permanent.
According to recent polling a vaccination requirement to fly on a plane enjoys broad support from Americans. This is true regardless of political party, age, or income. It’s also true of all races and regions of the country.
Overall support is 2-1, with 64% of respondents approving of vaccine passports for air travel, which is greater than the support for such a requirement to attend concerns or sporting events.
United Airlines, which claims its de-escalation procedures have led to a 50% reduction in passenger incidents, has sent a memo to flight attendants reminding them that they are never to duct tape passengers to their seats.
Rachelle Hunt of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra tried to bring her violin onto United Airlines flight UA4349 operated by CommutAir from Knoxville to Washington Dulles. However a flight attendant on the ERJ-145 aircraft declared this wasn’t permitted.
The flight attendant declared the passenger kept “on saying federal law” but at United “we don’t go with the federal law.”
A vaccine requirement for interstate travel has been discussed inside the Biden administration, but they’re not ready to pull the trigger.
United Airlines recovered from the PR hit that followed passenger David Dao being dragged off of one of their flights and being beaten, and the carrier’s CEO apologizing for this incident inconvenience other passengers. Spirit is better positioned with its customer base than United was to move forward.
My guess is that people choose to fly based on schedule and price and on operational reliability, and that it’ll be a limited number of people at the margin who choose based on a vaccine mandate. Am I wrong?
Six weeks ago I wrote that recovery in travel could be expected to stall out in the fall. With TSA checkpoint numbers stalled, and air travel credit card spend declining, even before school comes back and businesses delay office re-opening it appears the Delta variant is putting a pause on continued air travel recovery.
EU261 is supposed to provide compensation to passengers for flight cancellations and extreme delays. Instead these passengers delayed by Finnair wound up with a judgment against them after the company they used to pursue their claims went bankrupt and the carrier pursued reimbursement of its legal expenses.
Weeks ago I reported that American Airlines was working to bring back hot meals to domestic first class over the coming months, replacing cold meal boxes.
The biggest challenge is supply chain, and that it takes time to ramp up this up after not having offered ‘real’ food on most flights for over a year. However we’re starting to see progress along these lines, and more details on what to expect.
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 »
