Category Archives for Airlines.
Airlines and their unions have asked for a ‘clean extension’ of the payroll support money, another $25 billion. However if that’s to save 75,000 jobs through March 31, 2021 that amounts to $333,333 per job and come April 1 we’ll see job losses again (when it’s not election season).
Seriously, has anybody actually done the math here?
Air Canada Aeroplan is introducing family pooling as part of their new frequent flyer program launch in November. Aeroplan will allow up to 8 people to share their miles at no cost. Many programs charge a penny a mile to accomplish something similar.
Some of you are going to be tempted to abuse this. There’s a simple reason not to try.
Air India fired 48 pilots effective Thursday at midnight. The pilots union says the move is illegal. Air India says they’re relying on a Supreme Court ruling from last year that allows the move.
Apart from Indian labor law what’s striking about the story though is that after the pilots were terminated effective August 13, one of them continued to fly passengers.
Last month American Airlines fired their Cleveland airport General Manager for using his security badge to bypass TSA screening and board a flight, and having someone else skip security to bring him his laptop charger.
Recently American reminded all of its employees not to skip TSA screening checkpoints when traveling. But the requirement for vetted people to go through regular security is dumb.
The only way to have a mask mandate is for the mandate to apply to everyone, and that mandate is in many cases the only alternative to stricter measures. Whether you agree with that scientifically or not you need to at least acknowledge that as the political reality. And that’s why an anti-masker should, I think, support mask wearing because it’s less intrusive than the policies that would happen otherwise.
Delta Air Lines is now doing temperature checks of passengers at LAX. Anyone departing from their terminal 2 (but not those making a domestic connection) will have their temperature scanned via thermal imaging camera. This is a test that Delta could roll out across other airports.
If the airport were doing this, it would be illegal. And it does very little to catch anyone with Covid-19. There are better alternatives.
Why are airlines calling for a ‘clean extension’ of payroll support? It’s the most expensive unemployment program there is. While Congress and the President wrangle over how much to cover in additional unemployment for laid off workers, airline workers would get 100% of salary not to work and the government would effectively be paying airlines a 100% premium to do it.
It wasn’t enough just to ask customers to wear masks. Part of the reason is how political masks have become, although I wonder if they’re getting less so as people become used to the requirement, the President wears one in public, and Red States are requiring them too.
There are subtleties in airline mask policies, but largely there’s been a six-part progression to airline rules. The latest is to define what kind of mask is acceptable. There’s an exception to the ‘no masks with valve’ rule, though.
Aeroplan is offering 2500 miles for new members after first activity in the account. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but because of a quirk in Aeroplan’s program that can be leveraged into 20,000 miles worth of travel.
It’s been clear for months that airlines need to continue waiving change fees in order to convince customers to buy tickets. Otherwise their plans are just too uncertain to pull the trigger on travel.
American’s policy has been extended, applies to award travel even next year, and the airline will allow name changes on business travel tickets.
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 »
