Category Archives for Airlines.
For the past few weeks the Biden administration has considered requiring a negative Covid test in order to take a domestic flight. However air travel restrictions may actually compromise public health, rather than contributing to it or even being neutral.
If air travel is more costly and comes with greater hassle, people may drive instead of fly, and driving is less safe. More people may die on the roads.
Alaska Airlines will become the second U.S. airline in the global oneworld alliance, along with American Airlines, effective March 31. But it turns out Alaska Airlines miles will not be redeemable on oneworld airlines that haven’t already been partners in the Mileage Plan program at that time. Instead mileage redemption on new partners in oneworld will have to wait until summer.
In other words Alaska Airlines has rushed the work to join oneworld, and will actually join before it’s done. This means customers will be able to earn miles on new airlines, crediting to their Mileage Plan account – and more airlines will award airlines for travel on Alaska – but customers don’t gain access to spend those miles on more airlines for a few more months.
Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways announced today that they’ve become the first airline in the world to have vaccinated their entire front-line workforce including all pilots and cabin crew. Etihad did this without making vaccination mandatory.
United Airlines announced this morning that it has made a commitment of more than a billion dollars to electric aircraft through a partnership with Archer Aviation to develop air taxis for urban markets, while asking the federal government for a multi-billion dollar third bailout.
The deal has United acquiring 200 electric planes that travel up to 60 miles, providing a cost and speed advantage to the airport compared to UberX and helicopters.
Saver awards in business class are wide open flying Delta to Israel for the end of 2021. Israel is likely to have nearly their entire population vaccinated soon, if you’re looking for a place you might bet on opening up to travel for later this year it’s a reasonable bet to make.
Each flight showing availability has between 2 and 8 or more business class award seats available (8 is the most shown even when there are more than 8 available).
Southwest Airlines filed it annual SEC 10-K and it contains some interesting information about the Rapid Rewards program.
They continue carrying a higher percentage of award passengers than anyone else – by a lot, and even more so during the pandemic – and leveraged the Rapid Rewards program for a $600 million cash advance from Chase.
United Airlines Senior Vice President of Financial Planning John Gebo told the carrier’s employees that the carrier is open to mergers and acquisitions. My bet is this doesn’t happen, but there’s a way that it could.
As part of their soon-to-launch relationship with JetBlue, American will begin New York JFK – Tel Aviv, the most crowded Israel market but also the biggest.
Now they’ve announced the route that seemed to make sense six years ago when it looked like they’d go it alone to Israel: Miami – Tel Aviv. They’ve also announced six other new international routes, and two domestic Saturday-only regional jet routes. To several Latin cities they’ll be bigger this summer than they were in 2019.
According to an internal memo Cathay Pacific now exempts business and first class passengers from wearing masks while in their seats in lie-flat mode.
According to the airline, “seats in first and business class are more spacious with partitions, and passengers are exempted when lying flat for sleep.”
American Airlines acquired TWA in 2001. And since then former TWA employees have felt like they’ve gotten the short end of the stick. The most recent case involves ex-TWA pilots suing both American Airlines and its pilots union arguing that they conspired to strip these pilots of their senior in the airline’s 2011 bankruptcy. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit threw out the suit.
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 »
