Category Archives for Airlines.
American Airlines reports internally that its online sales volumes are nearly back to 2019 levels, which were record-setting. They’re seeing the strongest revenue performance they’ve had since before the pandemic.
And last week they filled nearly 80% of their seats systemwide, which for an airline is nearly completely sold out.
Southwest Airlines has placed a huge a huge new Boeing 737 MAX order: 100 Boeing 737 MAX 7 aircraft, Southwest also converted 70 MAX 8 orders to MAX 7 orders, and added 155 options for MAX 7 or 8 aircraft.
This is huge for Southwest – but especially for Boeing.
In an internal communication with employees, Delta Air Lines took credit for helping to shape the new voting restriction bill passed last week in their home state of Georgia that President Biden called “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”
In a statement attributed to CEO Ed Bastian, the airline says that the legislation “improved considerably” during this process and actually increases access to balloting, “[n]onetheless, we understand concerns remain..”
An American Airlines Executive Platinum elite member reached out to the airline’s twitter team for help with a reservation – and the twitter team wound up kicking their companion off the flight. There are lessons here.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
The holdings in two recent court rulings against the CDC’s eviction moratorium have caused questions about the legality of the Biden administration’s transportation mask mandate. The mask mandate goes beyond the specified example powers in the statute cited by CDC for its authority, and Congress may not have been able to delegate broader unspecified powers to the CDC even if it had wanted to.
Piedmont Airlines, an American Eagle carrier owned by American Airlines, told pilots they needed to wait to get vaccinated against Covid-19 because of increasing passenger demand for flights. Airlines argued that huge federal subsidies were necessary ‘to be ready’ for flying to return. Even at the absolute peak of flying days demand has been off at least 30% compared to before the pandemic. Yet despite subsidies, while airlines have pocketed the cash and paid employees as well, they haven’t kept those employees trained and ready to fly. So American’s subsidiary told pilots to delay vaccinations in order to work. In the memo sent last Wednesday, Piedmont Airlines Chief Pilot John Pursell told the regional carrier’s 500 pilots, “Piedmont will be unable to release any additional pilots for COVID vaccination for the weekend of March 19-21…
What Crandall intuitively understands is that passenger airlines are a low margin business (outside of areas where government limits competition). As a result it’s crucial to guard against cost disease and expense creep. He used sometimes apocryphal stories to make his point about attention to detail to keep costs low without noticeably sacrificing quality.
French long haul low cost airline French Bee plans to outfit two new Airbus A350s they’ll take delivery of this year with 488 seats, about 50% more seats than most airlines put on the plane. This plan is likely to fail. Here’s why low cost carriers work on short flights, but fail when trying to fly long haul.
Southwest Airlines has been boarding 10 passengers at a time, instead of lining up 30 people, throughout the pandemic.
The carrier, which does not pre-assign seats and lets customers pick once they’re on board – so boarding position determines the seat you get – has reverted to its traditional boarding process. Better get that vaccine jab quickly!
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 »
