Airlines

Category Archives for Airlines.

American Airlines Threatens To Call Police On Stranded Passengers After Canceling Flights

by Gary Leff

Nov 01 2021

Scenes from the American Airlines operational meltdown have been getting ugly. As the airline cancelled over 1000 flights on Sunday alone – the weekend of CEO Doug Parker’s 60th birthday – customer service lines stretched the length of airports and tensions rose. Here one group of passengers starts raising their voice to be heard about what’s (not) going on after their flights are cancelled and they’re given no options to get where they’re going. And an American Airlines agent responds by threatening to call the police.

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American Airlines Reminds Agents Of All The Reasons To Deny Your Lost/Damaged Baggage Claim

by Gary Leff

delta baggage handlers
Oct 31 2021

American Airlines sent out a memo to all of its agents reminding them about all of the reasons they should use to deny or limit passenger claims for delayed, lost or damaged luggage, especially after international trips.

It was all probably right, of course, but it’s more important to train agents and baggage handlers on proper care for luggage to minimize damage to the items entrusted to them.

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American Airlines Melts Down Over Crew Shortages And Wind

by Gary Leff

british tail plane
Oct 30 2021

American Airlines cancelled 342 flights on Friday, more than any other airline in the world. That came on the heels of a major day of cancellations on Thursday. The primary cause of this was weather in Dallas – and the skies were clear.

That was followed by even more cancellations on Saturday, as the airline ran out of available crew, with more to come on Sunday with planes and people out of position.

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American Airlines Quadrupled Austin Service, Could Tampa And Raleigh Be Next?

by Gary Leff

austin airport food court
Oct 30 2021

Before the pandemic American Airlines served 8 routes from Austin, flying to its hubs. They’ve quadrupled their destinations since then and passengers are using the airport for connections in a major way as well.

In any employee meeting American’s Vice President of Network Planning dropped two other cities they’re thinking about as having similar characteristics to Austin.

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American Airlines Looking At More Ways To Sell Wifi, Rather Than Making It Free

by Gary Leff

airline cabin
Oct 30 2021

Before the pandemic American Airlines was prepared to announce free inflight wifi. They didn’t want to do it, but Delta was testing it and if Delta went forward they were going to match whatever Delta did. (Delta ultimately found that their Gogo systems weren’t robust enough for all the usage free wifi entails.)

American doesn’t offer free wifi, but it’s something they still think about.

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Union Warns Pilots Not To Come Work For American Airlines

by Gary Leff

Oct 29 2021

It isn’t often that a union tries to get people not to join. Usually the incentive is to grow its ranks. However the American Airlines pilots union is warning pilots if they go to work at American Airlines they’ll be stuck at American for their whole career thanks to the senior system which makes jumping carriers not a viable option (since you lose schedule flexibility and pay).

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2 Groups That Have The Roughest Time In The New American Airlines Status Program

by Gary Leff

british tail plane
Oct 29 2021

It’s one thing to say that American Airlines doesn’t want a $15,000 a year flyer, who doesn’t also engage in the program in other ways, to have top status – since those other activities are often more profitable to American.

It’s another, I think, to say that whole classes of members are shut off from much of the new program based on their geography, or that new millennial flyers they supposedly want to attract have a higher hurdle to clear for status than older business travelers who last had to meet standard criteria for status in 2019.

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American Airlines CEO Speaks Out After Passenger Broke Crewmember’s Nose On Cross Country Flight

by Gary Leff

Oct 28 2021

We can punish bad actors – and we should – but there seems to be a combination of factors that lead American to have to deal with this issue more than others. Yet aside from lobbying for punishments, American’s approach has largely been to lobby for airports not to allow vendors to sell alcohol to go any longer. It’s always struck me as sort of stupid that places do this, but it doesn’t seem to be a factor driving American to experience problems more often than others.

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