Category Archives for Airlines.
American Airlines is adding several Chicago routes, bookable starting this weekend. The one I’m most excited about is Chicago – Fresno, but there are also surprising additions like Chicago – Nantucket (!) which airlines don’t pay enough attention to even seasonally, with service beyond Boston, New York, Philadelphia and to a lesser extent DC.
Here’s an internal employee update on all the new, resumed, and extended routes out of the Windy City for American AIrlines.
American Airlines now lets AAdvantage members redeem 12,000 miles for an at-home Covid-19 test and they’re offering slightly more than a penny per point in value with the redemption.
The CEO of Qantas previously claimed his country would re-open to international travel July 1. He was wrong. The airline is pushing back the restart of international flights to October 31.
Their Airbus A380s won’t return to service until June 30, 2023 ‘at the earliest’ so international flights will all be operated by Airbus A330s and Boeing 787s. And they won’t take delivery of their next 3 Boeing 787s, either.
In 2019 I told you that Amazon would offer consumers a standalone alternative to UPS and FedEx, something that was delayed by the coronavirus surge in orders.
Now, though, it appears that they are close to building a shipping network to carry third party packages. And it makes perfect sense from everything we’ve seen from Amazon so far.
Under normal circumstances I’d say it was serviceable, fine, but hardly interesting or innovative by modern standards. Yet there’s one salient feature to it: a 2021 safety video that makes no reference whatsoever to Covid-19. Nobody is even wearing masks. They’re crowded into a theater, for instance – a packed house – and no one is the least bit concerned about spread in such an indoor congregant setting.
Some might call that tough deaf, but I love it – a paean to normalcy:
On Monday the carrier reportedly fired its CEO Olfa Hamdi according to a note posted by the government to Facebook. Hamdi had been on the job for just over a month, and her announced dismissal came in the midst of a general strike by some of its 6500 employees fearful of not getting paid after the airline’s bank account was seized by Turkish airport operator TAV and also fearful that her turnaround plan might include privatization.
She says she’s still running the airline, though, after a failed attempt by the government to arrest her.
American Airlines has a wide variety of policies for how many checked bags are offered free to customers. They’re simplifying their policies, which in a couple of cases means more free bags but in other cases means fewer.
They’re also adding basic economy fares to transpacific and Israel/India flights, but those fares will include a checked bag. So the major restriction is that these fares will not allow changes.
A woman was removed from a Spirit Airlines flight to Florida on Thursday over her refusal to wear a mask. She told cabin crew that they were going to have to forcibly remove her – and that she didn’t have to wear a mask because she was eating. Back in September a man used a can of Pringles to avoid wearing a mask on an entire four hour flight.
American and JetBlue announced several new routes and codesharing to move forward with their ‘Northeastern alliance’ covering New York and Boston.
One of the routes, though, is curious because of a legal quirk. By law they’ll only be permitted to operate this flight on Saturdays.
Anyone claiming a mask exception on American now also gets the seat next to them empty and priority boarding, too. But they have to sit in the last row of their cabin, whether coach or business/first class. Here’s how the process works.
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 »
