Category Archives for Airlines.
Air Serbia is replacing its lone 13 year old long haul Airbus A330 aircraft with a new one – a twelve year old ex-Aeroflot A330-200 in new livery featuring Nikola Tesla on the tail.
The airline uses this aircraft to fly to New York JFK, and plans to increase its frequency from 2 to 3 times weekly and then 5 times a week over the summer. And it’s getting a new business class product.
Despite a years-long campaign against government subsidies for airlines, Delta CEO Ed Bastian thanked Congress for subsidies at the JP Morgan Industrials Conference and criticized foreign governments for not ponying up as much cash as the U.S. has given to its airlines.
Norwegian ceased its transatlantic business and is trying to stay afloat as an intra-European carrier. But the founder of Norwegian thinks his ultra low cost long haul business model – that has never worked before – is suddenly ripe for success. And he’s trying again with Norse Atlantic Airways.
OSM Aviation, which provided staff outsourcing to Norwegian, is 53% owner of the new venture. Expect low cost labor flying 9 to 12 ex-Norwegian Boeing 787s and even planning to offer connections with Norwegian.
At the beginning of February I wrote that American Airlines has 3 corporate goals, and two of them are weird. What stood out was the carrier’s goal to “passionately drive efficiencies.”
He presented the company’s goals to ‘come out ahead’ of competitors in front of investors at the J.P. Morgan Industrials Conference.
American Airlines failed to build a mockup of its new domestic interior, and that’s how obvious mistakes were made. In CEO Doug Parker’s telling, they cared about squeezing seats onto the plane not what it was like to sit in those seats or for employees to work the new configuration.
That’s changing for upcoming retrofits and new products like the Airbus A321XLR and Boeing 787-9 new interior.
American Airlines shared its plans for integrating with JetBlue, building back its Philadelphia hub, and whether or not their new flight to India will actually take off at a meeting with employees last week, a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing.
Here are 6 insights into the American Airlines strategy for recovery that came out of this session.
Brian Znotins, Vice President of Network and Schedule Planning at American Airlines, offered “When people ask me as a network planner ‘what’s my favorite airplane?’ it’s the cheapest.” And he reported that if the price is right they’ll buy planes.
Americans may be on the verge of receiving $1400 in Biden Bucks, but U.S. commercial airlines are getting $14 billion – including $3 billion for American Airlines. And according to the CEO of American, who has spent much of the last year working Capitol Hill, Republicans were ready to break ranks with their party to ensure that subsidies would flow to the airline industry.
In fact, from Parker’s telling at an internal meeting with employees, the Republican Party may not have tried to remove these subsidies because it would have caused some of their members to defect and create bipartisan support for part of the legislation.
Gol, the American Airlines partner in Brazil, says it is changing the schedule of every one of its flights in April and customers have to rebook.
The E.U. and others are working on the idea of a vaccination passport (or ‘certificate’ for those who find the nomenclature more palatable). 62% of Americans even believe vaccination should be required for air travel.
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 »
