Category Archives for Airlines.
American Airlines is bringing back its furloughed employees, but no flight attendant will actually return to work until March 2. Only one-third will return in March. And the government only requires employment through March 31, in exchange for the roughly $3.5 billion they should receive.
The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, which represents American’s cabin crew, plans to push for a third bailout.
While other airlines minimize their spending to conserve cash during the pandemic, American has been accelerating their capital spending to convert planes more quickly to this new standard. This is the wrong product at the wrong time: exactly the moment where there are fewer customers (so planes with more seats are less needed) and customers value space between them most (so reducing space between customers makes no sense).
American is nearly done. They have now sent 200 Boeing 737-800s in for densification. That’s two-thirds of the 737-800 fleet. But it’s far more of the active fleet.
Several lawsuits were filed over airlines’ resistance to providing customers with refunds when either cancelling or substantially changing itineraries early in the Covid-19 pandemic, as required by U.S. law. A class action lawsuit against American Airlines has been resolved in a draw.
In my experience American Airlines was one of the few ‘good guys’ with refunds. The places to focus on are the airlines and online travel agencies which really did act badly against their customers – like United, JetBlue, Air Canada, and online travel agency sites.
On December 24, the midday American Airlines Los Angeles – Honolulu flight cancelled. Christmas in paradise was at risk for its passengers.
So American Airlines decided to add a stop to its Los Angles – Maui flight 1859 to drop off passengers in Honolulu enroute to Maui’s Kahului Airport.
Delta cancelled 67 flights on Christmas Eve day. They had already cancelled 123 flights on Christmas Day, or 10% of their schedule, by 6 a.m. on the East Coast. In contrast American Airlines had cancelled only one flight.
This follows an operational meltdown over Thanksgiving.
Government payroll support (subsidies) require airlines to pay their furloughed workers, and not to furlough any more, through March 31. Internal American Airlines documents show that most workers won’t be back to work before that meaning most will never be back to work.
The airline does not even plan for two thirds of flight attendants to work during the Payroll Support Program period, and internal documents show how they may reduce the amount of government money that have to pay out to employees – keeping more for themselves.
After refusing to wear a mask on board and streaming advice online that others follow suit, self-styled black conservative activist David Harris, Jr. showed up at the airport for his return flight to find he was banned from American Airlines.
Now he’s back, flying United Airlines and again refusing to wear a mask. He was traveling with Fox News and The Bachelor alum Jillian Anderson, and together they took to the sky on United to promote President Trump and mask refuseniks.
Internal American Airlines documents describe the carrier’s plan to pay employees not to work, as part of the federal government’s Payroll Support Program passed by Congress as part of its stimulus legislation.
Anything that’s projected out to 2028 isn’t just far from certain, but more in the realm of entirely speculative, at this point. However any first class that does materialize will have to be better than QSuites, and indeed better than whatever QSuites are 8 years in the future. Combine that with Qatar’s outstanding service and catering it has the potential to be a fantastic product.
U.S. airlines recalled furloughed workers based on the passage of Covid relief legislation which sends them $15 billion. But the President hasn’t signed the bill yet and posted to twitter that he now opposes it. He may not actually veto, but what happens if he does – could airlines be on the hook to pay employees, even without the government subsidies that led them to promise to do so?
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 »
