Category Archives for Airlines.
United Airlines has Saks Fifth Avenue bedding for Polaris, American has Casper bedding for its business product. Delta, though, is focus grouping what its bedding future should look like. And the images it’s using in surveys aren’t Westin anymore. They’re also surveying changes for sustainability.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby was asked about a ‘vaccinated-only’ seating section. Kirby endorsed the concept saying it “sounds like a great idea,” and confirms that United has thought about it.
United will let elite members earn 25% of their status requirements with 3 trips, or members can choose a bonus of 10% of their status requirements or bonus miles instead. That’s on top of the 25% credit towards status United has already given.
While some people will earn elite status this year, 2021 is mostly a wash out for an airline’s best customers. And that means airlines need to take steps to extend status again and start over next year or they’ll risk pushing these members into free agency.
Vietnamese carrier Bamboo Airways plans U.S. flights starting later this year. Now they’re offering a status match for elites in any airline’s program that’s part of a major world alliance, up to their top tier, and they aren’t requiring any flights in order to get it.
It’s amazing that lawsuits over Covid-19 haven’t been nearly as significant as feared. At one point Covid-19 legislation was being held up in Congress over disagreements about including lawsuit immunity for employers (predictably Republicans favored this on behalf of business, and Democrats opposed on behalf of trial lawyers).
Yet there’s a new lawsuit by a Southwest Airlines flight attendant who says she contracted Covid-19 during recurrent training, gave it to her husband, and he died.
While there’s now an all-volunteer U.S. military, can the same be said about the American Airlines flight attendants corps?
I wrote earlier in April that the airline was considering drafting flight attendants to return to work. The airline is drafting 104 flight attendants back to work off of leave as follows.
The real estate market is hot in many areas of the U.S., and mortgage rates remain low by historical standards. Real estate agents will pay for their next lead, and lead generators will rebate part of that payment to you in the form of airline miles. It’s potentially win-win-win.
And in a sign of the times not only can you earn miles buying or selling a house (or both!) but there are now ads for American AAdvantage partner Miles From Home Realty running at American Airlines gates across 75 airports.
American’s new domestic coach product is worse than Delta’s. It’s worse than JetBlue’s. It’s worse than Southwest’s. The customer experience just wasn’t a priority. The airline didn’t bother building a cabin mockup before declaring this their standard product and rolling it out. Airline CEO Doug Parker didn’t even try it himself before the decision was made – or even until it was flying for six months.
It has hard seats and less space per passenger, and the airline even took out TVs from the seats.
We tend to look at the success story countries and extrapolate from them, why can’t the U.S. be like Australia? And of course there are reasons like Australia not having to worry about the virus coming in from abroad in as uncontrolled a fashion since the country is an island. But do travel restrictions inside a country, like we’ve seen in Australia where citizens couldn’t travel between states for much of the pandemic, usually work so well?
A new paper out of the University of Chicago finds that domestic travel bans may be counterproductive for controlling spread of Covid-19.
American Airlines invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a new headquarters, with their old facility bursting at the seams. They’ve since let go of 30% of management staff so don’t need as much space. And those that are left have mostly still working from home.
While they’re re-starting construction on unfinished parts of the new corporate campus, they’re bringing back people gradually, and recognize that some remote work makes sense into the future.
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 »
