Category Archives for Airlines.
Following the American Airlines third quarter earnings call on Thursday, senior executives held a ‘State of the Airline’ question and answer session with employees. One of the questions was about which businesses are traveling now?
American’s Chief Customer Officer Alison Taylor, who prior to this summer led sales for the airline, shared who their “largest customers at the moment” are.
American Airlines flight AA4194, an Eagle flight operated by American’s wholly-owned Envoy subsidiary, veered off the runway after landing on runway 6 in Freeport, Bahamas. The Embraer ERJ-145, registration N674RJ, originated in Miami. No one was hurt. There are reports of a collapsed gear.
This past Tuesday American Airlines flight AA2248 from Dallas Fort-Worth to San Francisco was delayed when the pilot decided to turn the aircraft back to the gate and offload a woman who refused to wear a mask.
But this wasn’t just any woman and this wasn’t just a mask story.
We have to be making progress when Costco.com is now selling a saliva PCR test online that promises results returned in 24-72 hours.
This isn’t available in Pennsylvania, Nevada, or Maryland, and they can’t ship to Puerto Rico. But it’s something you can buy from Costco as a one-off and you don’t even need to buy a pallet of tests. The price may work for a trip, but for return to normal life we really do need sub-$5 tests, which are certainly possible.
American Airlines followed United Airlines with its elimination of change fees on domestic and short haul international flights, excluding for customers who purchase basic economy fares. Packaged in with that change was allowing free standby travel for everyone.
There’s still a benefit to being an elite frequent flyer when it comes to standing by for another flight on American Airlines, however, and it’s not just having higher priority on the standby list.
A mission statement has been clearly missing from American Airlines. At times management has seemed confused over whether they’re trying to be a low cost carrier or a premium airline, and flight crew have been confused over what kind of service they’re supposed to be delivering
Last week, though, Doug Parker delivered his vision to employees for where he believes the airline can be over the next 3-5 years – the beginning of a true mission, perhaps.
Shortly after US Airways management took over at American Airlines, award tickets – especially in premium cabins internationally – because much harder to get. Then at the beginning of 2017 American eliminated most confirmed domestic upgrade space.
Now they’re making another change to how upgrade inventory is managed. Just because the upgrade inventory buckets (A,C) show availability doesn’t mean an upgrade will be available.
At the beginning of October American Airlines quietly took away access to extra legroom seating from partner airline elite members.
The airline has partially reversed course for some – but not all – of its joint venture partners, leading to some hope that the seating benefit could become available to Alaska and JetBlue elites as well.
Southwest Airlines has tons of cash, not a lot of debt, and a new view on economics of on-time performance. They’re not rushing back the 737 MAX. And they shared interesting data on the financial performance of Rapid Rewards, how business travel is doing, and explained the financial reason blocking middle seats made sense before but no longer does.
After 50 years committed to Boeing, Southwest Airlines said on its third quarter earnings call that if there was ever a time to consider buying non-Boeing aircraft it would be now. They aren’t growth constrained. They have plenty of unused and underutilized aircraft in their fleet. And that gives them the space and time to transition to a new aircraft.
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 »
