Category Archives for Airlines.
The beloved Biscoff cookies are one of the best things about flying, at least in coach. Traditionally they come two cookies to a package. Right now, though, some American Airlines flights are getting packages with just one cookie. And the cookie itself is smaller, too.
American Airlines has been cancelling hundreds of flights a day for several days. They don’t have enough pilots, especially Boeing 737 pilots, to operate the schedule they published.
However it appears that the system American Airlines uses to try to find pilots to pick up overtime and crew open trips may be standing in the way of getting some of its pilots to cover trips.
U.S. airlines, represented by their lobbying group Airlines For America, have jointed the biggest airline unions in calling for the Department of Justice to prosecute passengers who cause flight disturbances.
Notably though 2300 of the 3000 reports of unruly behavior the FAA has received this year have been related to masks. Isn’t it striking that the airlines and unions don’t recognize that three quarters of the incidents, then, could be eliminated by lifting the mask mandate – that no longer makes any sense in any case?
American Airlines cancelled 3% of its flights on Sunday, and about 2% already today. Cancellations appear to continue, and I’d guess will last through the end of the month until we hit the airline’s planned 1% pulldown of capacity for the first half of July.
If you’re flying a Boeing 737 especially this hits you hardest, since that’s the fleet type that’s been hardest hit by pilot shortages.
American Airlines has experience competing against Spirit Airlines at Dallas – Fort Worth and at their Chicago O’Hare hub. Now they’re being forced to contend with a big buildup in Spirit operations in Miami.
Here’s the game theory for how American Airlines will respond.
American Airlines eliminated free stopovers on award tickets with the April 8, 2014 AAdvantage massacre. There is one city where you can still book a free stopover – whether on award tickets or paid tickets – but only if you book by August 31.
If you’re booking travel to Japan, you can now have a free stopover in Tokyo.
On Saturday morning I was first to cover the ongoing issue American Airlines is having mass-cancelling flights. They logged about 125 cancellations on Saturday after a big cancel day on Friday. That’s about five times as many flight cancellations as United Airlines and Delta combined.
Today is worse than yesterday with 176 cancels already. That’s nearly 50% more than Saturday. And there are already about 100 cancels on the books for Monday.
Emirates started selling ‘basic business class’ fares last year. Qatar Airways came out with this, restricting access to lounges and to advance seat selection on the cheapest business class tickets. And the latest entrant into this game is Finnair, and their restrictions are absolutely brutal.
What’s really interesting here is whether airlines can make Basic Business Class work as a way to generate more revenue. While Basic Economy has caught on and had mixed results, it’s going to be a lot harder to do with Business Class and that strategy will probably cost an airline more than it’ll generate in incremental revenue. Your cable television bill helps explain why.
American Airlines has cancelled over 100 flights already today. The most common reason is ‘flight crew unavailable’. Many other flights show cancelled due to ‘operational decision’ which appears to be giving that flight’s pilots to another aircraft (in other words, also ‘flight crew unavailable’). In contrast, as of this writing United has cancelled eight flights today and Delta has cancelled two.
The issue appears to be concentrated on the Boeing 737 fleet. American’s schedule seems too big for the crew they have available, especially since they’re only midway through the process of bringing inactive pilots back online.
American Airlines is launching service between Austin and Washington Dulles in August. This flight is absolutely ideal for me. I live in Austin and in the Before Times my most frequent destination was Washington DC – a minimum of once a month, and often twice.
But the flight times are terrible – scheduled to allow a single plan to operate the route, rather than being scheduled for the business travelers who would actually take the flight.
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 »
