Category Archives for Airlines.
Loyalty programs are wasting opportunities to attract good customers, but with hotels at low occupancy and more airline seats than customers competition for elite members is going to become more fierce. Enter the status match. Loyalty programs are going to want to make sure they don’t become too expensive (offering benefits to people who do not become customers) and aren’t the victims of fraud (there are new techniques to fight status match fraud).
Two brothers were kicked off a United Airlines flight departing Newark on January 23 because they were wearing too much personal protective equipment, not too little. Usually we hear about anti-maskers. And Dr. Fauci even recommends wearing two masks. But United wasn’t having any of the more-protective masks these passengers wore.
Delta SkyMiles is at it again. They’ve raised the price of award travel on their partner airlines with no one looking. They’ve done it by a lot. And they’ve done it after just raising award prices in October. During a global pandemic when awards should be easier and cheaper to get than ever. In fact Delta is now charging more than double what United and American charge for the best awards in many cases.
Get ready to have your pockets picked, again.
Democratic congressional leaders are expected to back a third airline bailout of $14 billion for airlines and $1 billion for contractors.
In a move perhaps akin to selling upgrades from United Cargo to Economy, United is offering customers who buy basic economy tickets the ability to pay up after purchase to convert their ticket to regular economy.
With basic economy now a tool to segment business travelers from leisure travelers, and with virtually no business travelers, there’s little downside and only incremental revenue in offering passengers the ability to ‘buy out’ of the restrictions on the tickets they’ve purchased.
American Airlines told employees this afternoon that they plan to send WARN Act notices to 13,000 team members on Friday. This starts a 60 day clock to furloughs. It doesn’t mean 13,000 people will lose their jobs in early April – it means that American plans to reduce its workforce again, and that up to 13,000 people could be laid off.
The CDC accepts antigen tests, and results can be provided in less than 30 minutes. If we want everyone tested for travel (or for any other activity) we need to make testing convenient and inexpensive. If you’re going to fly, show up at the airport, get tested, and go.
I shared a week and a half ago that American Airlines was selling off wine that it had in storage with fewer flights and customers in premium cabins. American partnered with Vinesse, a company known for offering lots of frequent flyer miles to reward customers’ buying bad wine, to handled the sales.
At American’s “State of the Airline” event following Thursday’s earnings call, Chief Customer Officer Alison Taylor was asked about the program, and joked that there must be a correlation between her being Australian, and being asked to talk about alcohol.
American Airlines says they have too many employees to service passenger demand. The latest round of subsidies allows them to furlough again April 1. They haven’t sent out WARN Act notices yet. So they continue to being flight attendants back in for duty, with 1000 more told to begin April 1. They could find themselves working for just a matter of days.
I have to give a lot of credit to Capital One for owning up to this, and in the process teaching me something about their debit cards I didn’t know before.
An African American passenger, checking in for an American Airlines flight at a kiosk in Charlotte, got hit with what they saw on their statement as an ‘African American service charge’ for their checked bags. It was an awkward coincidence involving data matching and good intentions.
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 »
