Category Archives for Airlines.
A passenger with Covid-19 died yesterday on a domestic flight, as reported by a fellow passenger on twitter. The passenger is LAX-based, and the other flight I’ve found to or from LAX which diverted yesterday was UA591 from Orlando. United confirms it diverted for medical reasons.
When Southwest Airlines extended elite status back in April, and made it easier this year to earn both status and a Companion Pass, they extended the validity of travel vouchers.
There’s been discussion for months about being able to convert travel funds into Rapid Rewards points and that functionality is finally available. The rate is reasonable but I won’t be taking them up on the offer. Here’s why.
Six men were charged with “stealing millions of airline frequent flier miles” in the Northern District of Texas. While the Department of Justice doesn’t say this, the court in which charges are being brought includes Dallas and almost certainly means they’re prosecuting a theft of American AAdvantage miles.
The lead defendant was arrested in Poland in May and extradited, arriving in FBI custody on Friday after weekend travel from Warsaw to Dallas. I’ve been involved in several criminal trials involving miles and points as an expert witness. This is the first one I’m aware of that involved an international arrest and extradition.
Right now there’s a stronger likelihood of a second round of airline subsidies from the federal government than at any time in the past several months. It appears that $17 billion more for airlines is included in the next scaled-down federal stimulus bill, and legislative leaders in the House and Senate plan to bundle it with must-pass funding measures to keep the government running and avoid a shut down. Now legislators have a Friday deadline.
Airlines have deployed the argument that the vaccine means they need subsidies because they’ll have to scale up operations to be prepared for cargo shipments, and even though they’d be paid to ship cargo somehow they are unable to prepare for that on their own. This is, to put it bluntly, a lie. Here are 10 reasons why.
At the end of last week American Airlines President Robert Isom held a town hall meeting with pilots, a recording of which has been reviewed by View From The Wing. Isom outlined the airline’s aircraft fleet plans for 2021.
Airlines have gone to some real lengths in recent years to make their safety videos memorable and sometimes funny. Often they’re just trying too hard. Some carriers like American Airlines have stayed away from this entirely with their new safety video, released by mistake.
Despite all of the effort and money that’s gone into safety videos, it’s apparently never occurred to anyone with enough influence to use Men Without Hats The Safety Dance – until now. How is this possible?
Alaska Airlines flight 1367 from Las Vegas to Portland departed over 4 hours late on Saturday after a a man drove a truck through the fence at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport and onto the tarmac – and proceeded to climb onto the wing of the Boeing 737-900.
You can see that he doesn’t stop there. He badly wants to scale the winglet. But he struggles, so he tosses his shoes overboard – at police. The man loses his balance and falls off the plane. He’s surrounded by officers and taken into custody.
Japan Airlines has a new cost-saving measure they’re testing on Bangkok – Tokyo Haneda overnight flights (JL flight 34): letting customers choose in advance to skip meal service in exchange for an amenity kit.
United Airlines has announced that they’ll reduce greenhouse gas emissions 100% by 2050, making a bolder claim than world airlines through trade association IATA which commit to a 50% reduction in carbon footprint by 2050. Both goals are far enough off as to be largely symbolic, but what’s got great potential here is the path United plans to pursue to get there.
The airline will invest in directly removing carbon from the atmosphere – not feel-good measures like planting trees where the accounting is murky. The technology is too expensive today, but payment processor Stripe just announced their own investments here. Adding United and perhaps soon others could help bring about critical mass that makes this technology viable to solve our environmental problems.
Low yield traffic may lead the way out of the pandemic, and if there’s hope for success it’s precisely that Jet Airways sat out Covid-19 in bankruptcy court – they already went bankrupt – and reviving the concept might mean facing scaled back competition, albeit alongside scaled back demand.
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 »
