Category Archives for Airlines.
During United’s fourth quarter earnings call they made several revealing statements about their business, travel, and their mental models for the U.S. recovery from Covid-19. Here are 8 things that stood out to me.
President Biden issued an executive order on mask wearing, as well as testing and quarantine for international travel.
The order doesn’t actually do anything. Instead it outlines Administration policy and instructs various departments of government to come up with plans to implement. Here are the key elements of the plan that includes masks, testing, quarantines and vaccination records.
Spirit outlined their new program in the fall but now there’s greater detail since the program has launched, specifically around the co-brand credit card and the value of points. And the program is enough of an improvement that it’s prompted me to join.
Cathay Pacific first revealed their plans for a new first class product to be offered on board Boeing 777-9 aircraft when they’re delivered in 2017. A year later they still didn’t know whether they would offer enclosed suites and hadn’t settled on a seat supplier.
Instead they said they’d look at the current creative offerings of seat suppliers to decide who they wanted to go with, and “co-create” a new concept. With all of the delays to the Boeing 777-9 there’s been no hurry. But now there’s talk of putting new seats in their Boeing 777-300ERs, too.
Last week American Airlines shared with its pilots that they’re testing what they call ‘tapas’ in domestic first class.
This test of new meals is happening on about 40 flights a day departing from Charlotte. It becan January 13 and runs through March 9, 2021. And, a spokesperson for American shares with me that there are two versions of this new meal, a “fresh new protein box and vegetarian box meal concepts.” Here’s what the ‘protein box’ looks like
After the events of January 6th at the U.S. Capitol, Joe Biden nixed plans to take a chartered Amtrak train down to D.C. and flew instead. Only he wasn’t flown by the Air Force. He and his team and accompanying media took private charters from Wilmington, Delaware to Joint Base Andrews.
James Hogan has been spotted in Podgorica, consulting with Montenegro’s Minister of Finance on the formation of a new national airline. Montenegro Airlines liquidated last month, the victim of losses, mismanagement, and a scandal involving free travel for government officials. The country promised it would be replaced by new carrier 2 Montenegro.
For several years American Airlines has had a laser focus on ‘D0’ exact on-time departures. It hasn’t made them an on-time airline, but they’ve sacrificed cleaning, processing upgrades and standbys at the gate, and wouldn’t hold even the last flight of the day for connecting passengers.
Gate agents, used to getting called in for missing D0, and used to managers yelling at them as they try to get flights out, haven’t fully adapted to the need to prioritize aircraft cleaning in the Covid era on just pushing the aircraft back on time. Before the pandemic sacrificing cleaning to get planes out was the airline’s explicit policy.
According to an announcement by the firm that American Airlines tapped to find its new Chief Human Resources Officer, the role they’re hiring for will eventually report to Doug Parker’s replacement – who will be an internal hire – once Executive Vice President Elise Eberwein retires and the airline replaces Doug Parker as CEO with an internal candidate,
By giving American strength in areas where they’re weak, we’re going to see a viable competitor:- especially against Delta and United in New York. Delta is the clear market leader in ‘actual New York’ and United is dominant at Newark. American-JetBlue together become a third competitor.
And with Alaska, American addresses its weakness in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest – and helps preserve Alaska as a strong competitor against Delta’s encroachment in Seattle.
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 »
