Airlines

Category Archives for Airlines.

Southwest’s CEO Says Business Travel Won’t Return For A Decade. He’s Wrong.

by Gary Leff

Sep 14 2020

I’ve been overall a pessimist about business travel, but Southwest’s CEO takes it too far, arguing that he “wouldn’t be surprised to see business travel languish for a decade before it gets back to 2019 levels.”

Sure, he’s signaling that with their relatively strong balance sheet and largely domestic travel exposure they’re better-positioned than rivals to withstand a long travel recession. But we’re already starting to see cracks in the ‘indefinite work from home’ model.

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Take A Photo On A Flight In India, Your Airline May Lose The Right To Operate The Route For Two Weeks

by Gary Leff

Sep 13 2020

With India rounding towards 5 million lab-confirmed cases of Covid-19, hundreds of millions of cases based on antibody testing and where lockdown may have increased virus spread, and most foreign nationals banned from entering the country, the government has chosen an odd time to care about the scourge of… inflight photography.

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Will Pandemic Airline Furloughs Reduce Worker Appetite For Unions?

by Gary Leff

United Flight Attendants Campaigning in Union Election Outside San Francisco United Club
Sep 12 2020

In a shrinking industry airline unions become akin to a Ponzi scheme, benefiting the first in at the expense of those who joined later. When American Airlines took payroll support money from the government, they paid senior flight attendants to stay home while making junior cabin crew work all of the flights. And while neither Southwest nor Delta are furloughing any flight attendants, it’s the junior crewmembers at American and United that are losing their jobs at the beginning of October.

One British Airways union is even appealing to the company to furlough workers – from a rival union.

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Will Airlines Ending Change Fees Mean More Overbookings – And Involuntary Denied Boardings?

by Gary Leff

Sep 12 2020

With U.S. airlines eliminating change fees on domestic trips (excluding basic economy fares), will that least to more cancellations? And will higher cancellation rates mean that airlines need to overbook flights more than before?

If more people can change plans without penalty, will we have more people changing plans – so more people not taking the seats they’ve booked? Will that mean airlines need to sell even more seats for each flight to make up for it?

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American Airlines Appears To Trade Air Service For Political Support In Oklahoma

by Gary Leff

Sep 12 2020

American Airlines announced they were going to stop serving 15 cities once government payroll subsidies ran out, and they were no longer required to fly to all of their pre-existing markets.

They’ve backtracked on several of those changes. The latest is Stillwater, Oklahoma where the airport put out a press release basically announcing that their Senators traded political support for air service.

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Delta Improves Filtering Of Jet Bridge Air To Limit Spread Of Coronavirus

by Gary Leff

Sep 11 2020

On board and inflight is one of the safest indoor environments from a Covid-19 transmission perspective. But that doesn’t mean that travel is safe. Most planes (but not smaller regional jets and turboprops) have HEPA air filtration that’s highly protective.

That doesn’t mean the virus doesn’t spread. Often when this and other viruses are attributed to flights it’s likely spreading at airport security, in the gate area, or on the jet bridge. These are places where passengers congregate closely together and where the air isn’t filtered as well.

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