Category Archives for Airlines.
On tight connections American Airlines sometimes meets their ConciergeKey members on the jetway of their arriving flight and driven across the tarmac to their onward gate in hub cities. They’ve done this since 2014 in a partnership with Cadillac. That partnership has ended.
It’s a new test at some airports where customers checking in at self-service machines get offered to check their carry-on for free. According to an internal memo on the project, “Offers will be random and may not apply to every customer.”
American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have delayed the return of alcohol to their flights, ostensibly because of poor behaving passengers – although they’ve behaving badly while also not being served alcohol inflight so it seems an odd connection to make. American Airlines continues to serve alcohol in first class.
Facing a call by the international head of their flight attendants union for federal action to ban alcohol during air travel, United Airlines has joined the mix in a rather odd way.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian spoke at the Alliance Bernstein 37th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference on Thursday, trumpeting the turnaround for his airline – they’re going to be profitable in June and expect to make money for the second half of 2021.
He dropped several interesting tidbits along the way about their American Express card partnership, blocked middle seats, and Delta’s strategy going forward.
Last summer the CEO of the global oneworld alliance – which includes airlines like American, British Airways, Japan Airlines, Qantas and others – was talking up a project to let members of one frequent flyer program upgrade on other airlines in the alliance
Now they’re saying it’ll launch this year.
On the heels of extending systemwide upgrades that were scheduled to expire in 2021 out to July 31, 2022, American Airlines has also extended its pause on mileage expiration. Miles won’t expire until April 1, 2022.
United Airlines has aggressively bet on new technologies, like its billion dollar order in February for electric aircraft from Archer Aviation to provide quick, efficient connections to the airline’s hubs.
Now they’ve become the first major U.S. carrier to place an order for Boom supersonic jets putting themselves down for 15 with an option for 35 more.
American Airlines has 3 new promotions to accelerate earning status for existing AAdvantage elite members, and it helps put me back on track to where status can be reached this year.
Registration is required, log into your account and click on your ‘promotions’ tab and you’ll see a promotion to register for. There are actually three separate promotions and you need to accept each one separately.
There’s been an increase in inflight incidents. There are several reasons for this including a disproportionate share of leisure travelers and mask mandates that increasingly make little sense.
However there’s a push to blame alcohol even though most airlines haven’t been serving alcohol in the coach cabin. There’s even now a push to have the federal government ban cocktails inflight.
American Airlines passengers have built Austin into a make-your-own connecting hub, using the ramp-up in Austin destinations and the run-up in prices for flights they’d traditionally take as an excuse to use this smaller, friendlier airport for easy connections and savings. That’s helped achieve record-high load factors for Austin flights, even for the airline’s new routes.
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 »
