Category Archives for Airlines.
If the passenger who hadn’t traveled to Wuhan did pick up the virus inflight, what’s remarkable is that with 15 people that had been in Wuhan in January ultimately testing positive for the virus only one other person on the aircraft got it. What’s remarkable is the lack of spread, rather than that there’s spread, considering the number of infected persons on board.
United Airlines branded its cleanliness efforts with Clorox. Hilton puts Lysol stickers on hotel room doors after the rooms have been cleaned. Now Delta Air Lines has struck a deal with Lysol as well.
Lysol will provide Delta with disinfectant spray and wipes and “develop new protocols for areas such as lavatories.” They’ll also work on “disinfection procedures at departure gates and in Sky Clubs, and Delta will deploy “care carts” with EPA-approved Lysol disinfection products.”
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby talked during his airline’s earnings call about the airline expecting to plateau at 50% of last year’s revenue ‘until there’s a vaccine’ and then expecting recovery to come very quickly to the airline business. American Airlines, too, talked about a vaccine for Covid-19 in its earnings call.
I’ve already written about a vaccine not being a silver bullet, that it’s likely not to be 100% effective and not everyone will take it. That means the virus will continue to circulate, people will still get infected. A vaccine may help – but perhaps less than you think – and isn’t the ‘trigger’ for travel everyone hopes.
Back in the fall American Airlines decided to eliminate their home-based reservations agents. Now in the Covid era, as the airline sheds jobs, the company may want to keep these agents after all.
Last August American Airlines announced plans to fly from Dallas Fort Worth to Tel Aviv. With the announcement of their new partnership with JetBlue they unveiled plans to fly New York JFK – Tel Aviv.
There’s been speculation that this meant moving the DFW flight to New York and operating just a single Tel Aviv service.
Back in March an American Airlines flight attendant wrote about her ordeal trying to wear a face shield while working flights. She viewed it as taking precautions to protect herself while some passengers refused to comply with the carrier’s mask requirement. The airline told her she should just go on leave if she felt unsafe, and that she made “customers feel uncomfortable.”
Now American Airlines has reportedly reversed its ban on flight attendants wearing face shields.
Even in the shadows mileage brokering is a $600 – $700 million a year business. One platform is trying to provide transparency and assurance to an industry that’s full of scammers. But in many cases the transactions are against the rules and still carry risk.
Since Wednesday, July 22 American Airlines has been able to apply up to 8 credits from cancelled ticket to a single new ticket purchase.
When you cancel a trip, any residual value is stored alongside your ticket number. The ticket number is what’s used to apply a credit to a new reservation. American’s AACoRN system now lets an agent enter multiple ticket numbers – up to 8 – that have credits attached to them, and apply them all to a booking.
I’ve been expecting the Boeing 737 MAX to return to the skies before the end of the year, and it’s looking a bit touch and go whether it’ll re-enter commercial service by then. However American Airlines President Robert Isom told employees of the airline on Thursday that they currently expect the plane to be approved to fly by the FAA in October and back in the air flying for commercial airlines in December.
With the global pandemic, airlines have looked to cut costs wherever they can, while saying the changes are driven by safety concerns.
Just last weekend I reported that American Airlines, which started giving out fruit and cheese plates in domestic first class on flights over 900 miles, eliminated meals on the longest domestic flights of more than 2200 miles (such as Miami- Seattle) and similar-length international flights. They’ve already done an about face on this plan.
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 »
