Category Archives for Airlines.
JetBlue was born at New York JFK, with slots gifted like so much manna from heaven by Senator Chuck Schumer. But JetBlue no longer drinks from the New York Kool-Aid, they’ve talked about moving down to Florida and they’ve built up flights at Newark.
Schedule data from Cirium Diio Mi shows that JetBlue is operating 1685 flights to 29 destinations from Newark this month. However they don’t have the infrastructure at Newark to support their current ambitions.
After more than a year Air Canada is issuing refunds to customers whose flights were cancelled due to the pandemic. They’re only doing this now that the Canadian government has forked over subsidies. They told the government they’d give money back to consumers, but only if the government gave them far more money first.
The Canadian government had backed Air Canada’s decision to keep customer money for transportation that was never provided. For flights to and from the U.S., though, this is a clear violation of U.S. law.
A woman’s story about being scolded for breastfeeding on board her American Airlines flight is going viral on social media.
Akeia Escobar was flying Dallas – Fort Worth to Atlanta on American Airlines flight AA980 when, she says that a flight attendant told her to “cover up [her] breast.” But her “baby was latched and [her] nipple was not visible.”
The President of the American AAdvantage program says they’re working on something to replace award charts. He says has ‘no plans to devalue’ which means, of course, that he’s planning to devalue the program but not call it a devaluation. How do we know this?
Award charts are the fundamental cornerstone of a loyalty value proposition.. Always and everywhere that a frequent flyer program has dropped award charts it has meant big devaluations. There are no exceptions.
With planes full again, there’s so much pressure to get out right at “D0” that one gate agent shared a story on social media of leaving people behind at the gate. There were seats available because some customers didn’t show, and the agent wasn’t able to put employees waiting to travel on the flight in their place – because it would have meant an extra couple of minutes, which the airline won’t abide.
First class comes at a higher price point than coach and comes bundled with additional services, including drink service. The irony of course is that the difference between first class and coach really shrunk throughout the pandemic.
Meal service hasn’t returned in earnest to most domestic flights up front, with packaged cold items the norm on many domestic flights – and even that was an improvement over what airlines had been serving. In other words, first class passengers saw more cost cuts than those who were just buying transportation. There’s ‘an aviation angle’ to the axe any writer has to grind. But it’s almost always wrong.
United Airlines is running a sweepstakes giving away free travel to people that have been vaccinated. But they won’t consider someone getting AstraZeneca shots to be vaccinated. Anyone who took AstraZeneca needs to follow the same mail-in route to enter as a vaccine refusenik.
On June 7 passengers on board an American Airlines flight 2511 from Los Angeles to Charlotte got rowdy after a flight delay. Crew were initially kind and apologized. However one flight attendant summoned his inner Howard Beale from the film Network and decided he wasn’t going to take it any more.
The whole cabin applauded.
Flight attendants union head Sara Nelson is calling for a federal ban on inflight alcohol. It’s a movement that has a long history, dating to efforts for such a ban by segregationist Strom Thurmond in the mid-1950s, making many of the same arguments then that she makes today.
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 »
