Category Archives for Airlines.
Delta Air Lines told employees they helped write Georgia’s new voting law. They dug in deeper defending their position that they ‘made the bill better’ and refused to criticize it.
Facing online and media controversy, and a supposed-consumer boycott, they’ve now reversed course. After first congratulating themselves on it, and then refusing to criticize it, CEO Ed Bastian now says it’s abhorrent.
Air Canada Aeroplan has just announced all elite status is being extended through the end of 2022, while still doing a good job of rewarding and incentivizing travel this year. They’re also pausing mileage expiration through January 2022.
Last Friday Delta Air Lines told employees they were part of crafting Georgia’s voting restrictions bill offering that their “state government affairs team..heavily engaged on this issue, holding meetings with state elected officials on both sides of the aisle in order to make sure the Delta voice was well represented and heard.”
CEO Ed Bastian refused to condemn the legislation, claiming they made it better, and at most was willing to acknowledge that “concerns remain.” Today the airline released a video to employees defending this position.
American Airlines took a Boeing 737 MAX out of service on Monday after it experienced a pitch trim issue enroute from Miami to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
Ultimately the pilots of the aircraft remained in control and landed safely. The system worked as it should. Extra attention, though, will be likely paid to this incident because it involved elevator trim and the MAX, even though it doesn’t appear to have involved the MCAS system.
Air France KLM just announced that they plan to move to ‘continuous pricing’ rather than filing fares and managing availability on specific flights. They think that, on average, they can charge consumers about 10% more for tickets than they do today.
Several other airlines are working on the same thing. Here’s how it works.
Want to change your flight, change your seat, or try to score an upgrade? You won’t be able to use an American Airlines gate-side kiosk to do it anymore starting April 1.
American Airlines reports internally that its online sales volumes are nearly back to 2019 levels, which were record-setting. They’re seeing the strongest revenue performance they’ve had since before the pandemic.
And last week they filled nearly 80% of their seats systemwide, which for an airline is nearly completely sold out.
Southwest Airlines has placed a huge a huge new Boeing 737 MAX order: 100 Boeing 737 MAX 7 aircraft, Southwest also converted 70 MAX 8 orders to MAX 7 orders, and added 155 options for MAX 7 or 8 aircraft.
This is huge for Southwest – but especially for Boeing.
In an internal communication with employees, Delta Air Lines took credit for helping to shape the new voting restriction bill passed last week in their home state of Georgia that President Biden called “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”
In a statement attributed to CEO Ed Bastian, the airline says that the legislation “improved considerably” during this process and actually increases access to balloting, “[n]onetheless, we understand concerns remain..”
An American Airlines Executive Platinum elite member reached out to the airline’s twitter team for help with a reservation – and the twitter team wound up kicking their companion off the flight. There are lessons here.
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 »
