Category Archives for Airlines.
American Airlines mortgaged their AAdvantage program with the federal government, using it as collateral for a subsidized $5.5 billion loan. The government will get warrants to purchase stock in the airline – and the assets of the frequent flyer program itself if the airline defaults.
American Airlines announced they were going to stop serving 15 cities effective October 7, after government payroll subsidies ran out.
With two of the cities they couldn’t legally drop service because of agreements they’d entered into with the Department of Transportation but forgotten about.
You can generally buy yourself an extra seat on U.S. airlines. With airfares low, this can be a great deal.
American Airlines doesn’t promote the option, but they even have a no procedure to allow you to use credits from previous trips to pay for your extra seat.
American’s argument boils down to DOT rules were never updated for the information age so they’re permitted to keep their rules off the website where customers would normally expect to find them. As American puts it, “[t]he tariff public inspection requirements were first adopted by the Civil
Aeronautics Board (“CAB”) in 1965, well before the development of the World Wide Web.”
In other words, American says they haven’t broken any rules because the rules themselves are broken.
Southwest has a rather impressive promotion: book a ticket by Thursday, September 24, 2020 and fly by November 15, 2020 and you will earn a companion pass valid from January 6, 2021 through February 28, 2021. That’s nearly two months of companion pass flying after buying and flying a single ticket.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and the coronavirus pandemic has created plenty of necessity. Thai Airways is in the midst of restructuring and they’re looking for revenue anywhere they can find it.
Among the course options, for 2800 Baht ($89) you can learn to be a flight attendant. Their safety course lets you head down the emergency slide and put a real fire out on a plane. You can even take cooking classes to make inflight Thai meals.
American has been speaking to the customers that are traveling the most now during the pandemic – and it’s not the ‘executive liaison’ callers doing the dialing, it’s the airline’s senior management.
American Airlines President Robert Isom told pilots last week that Chief Revenue Officer Vasu Raja and Chief Customer Officer Alison Taylor thought it would be “neat to find out who it is that’s traveling and still earning elite status throughout the pandemic.” So they “pulled a lit of the top 50 customers and assigned 10 [each]” to various senior executives, including Isom himself who reports that this was the “first time [he] cold called customers in a long time.”
There are two new important testing developments in travel today, both United Airlines announcement. United is partnering to provide Covid testing for its San Francisco – Hawaii flights. They’re providing testing at the airport, and they’ve worked with Hawaii to accept an Abbott rapid test rather than just a PCR test.
The airline expects to expand this to other airports and destinations.
American Airlines no longer sends membership kits to frequent flyers when they earn AAdvantage elite status. This means that elites are no longer sent a membership card, luggage tags, or employee recognition certificates. Instead the airline tells newly minted elite members that AAdvantage is “a fully digital experience.”
However they will still allow elite members to call and request certificates to give to employees for ‘above and beyond’ service.
It’s been two years since they announced this was coming, and all they’ve done so far is change the program name and announced points will no longer expire, but Virgin is trying their hand at a coalition loyalty program across the group’s brands. There’s also a double points promotion for Virgin flights.
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 »
