Category Archives for Airlines.
A flight attendant accused Elon Musk of sexual harassment while working on contract for SpaceX corporate jets in 2016. She was paid a $250,000 settlement two years later over accusations that Musk, after she had become a licensed masseuse, sought sex during an inflight massage on a trip to London and offered to buy her a horse.
The CDC says you need to get tested for domestic travel, something they didn’t argue was necessary during the Delta surge or the Omicron surge at the beginning of the year. They’re also saying it’s important to be tested for domestic travel but not for indoor dining or concerts.
More than bringing politics into the aircraft cabin, the problem here is that Let’s Go Brandon has simply become derivative. It’s so 2021. Wearing a Let’s Go Brandon pin isn’t just a juvenile way to express yourself, it’s a way of saying I’m 8 months behind the meme.
Sometimes airline union leaders flat out steal from their members. Sometimes it’s more subtle.
On Sunday I covered remarks by the head of the Delta SkyMiles program where he explained, among other things, why Delta doesn’t try to offer awards that look like outsized value to the member the way that Air Canada Aeroplan does.
So it seemed worth looking at Mark Nasr’s comments at the same Skift conference. Mark is Air Canada’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, Digital, Product, and Brand and oversees the Aeroplan program. He explains why it’s important to deliver good value awards to customers in order to succeed.
In January 2020 a passenger lost their iPad on an American Airlines flight from London Heathrow to Dallas – Fort Worth. As they explained it “somehow got ‘swallowed’ by [the] seat” in business class.
The passenger reports that the pilot (!) helped him to “partially strip away some of the seat upholstery including the life vest” but they weren’t able to find it. And they abandoned the search.
When things go wrong with an airline’s operation most carriers have “interline agreements” that let them put their passengers on another airline’s flights. However in 2018 American Airlines decided it was too expensive to put passengers on other airlines when they cancelled their own flights.
There’s an ability for American Airlines agents to make exceptions to this policy, and these are important for passengers without status flying coach to know about and ask for.
JetBlue wants Spirit Airlines shareholders to vote against merging with Frontier Airlines. They’ve reiterated their offer of more money to buy Spirit. They’ve reduced their offer from $33 to $30 per share but are dangling an additional 10% – back up to $33 per share in cash – subject to negotiation and due diligence.
JetBlue’s offer is for substantially more money. It does not provide greater certainty, as they claim, though. There is more regulatory risk though it’s difficult to evaluate exactly how much. There should be a path to solve this though through negotiation if JetBlue is as confident in closing the transaction as they claim: a higher breakup fee.
The inimitable Brian Sumers interviewed the Vice President of the Delta SkyMiles program for Skift and put the question to Prashant Sharma why does Delta charge so many more miles for the best awards than other airlines?
And Sharma’s answer is pretty simple: it’s because they can get away with it, and customers keep earning SkyMiles and signing up for the Delta credit card.
Standbys are being cleared earlier automatically and upgrades are now being cleared earlier by the ‘Agent Assist’ program which was developed to make work at the boarding gate easier, support single agent boarding, and still allow a flight to go off on time.
But with standbys and upgrades happening earlier, more customers are showing up at the gate asking to get on board after most seats have already been given away.
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 »
