Category Archives for Airlines.
U.S. airlines need to block middle seats because their brands don’t convey cleanliness or trust. When you don’t have cleanliness and trust as a brand, you have to massively overshoot on investment to credibly signal ‘this time is different’.
The rate of growth in air travel has slowed. Forward bookings actually fell after 8 straight weeks of growth. And travel searches are down.
When people (1) fly because they have to, and (2) don’t have many competitive options because of reduced schedules, inflight product doesn’t drive business. And airlines are looking to conserve cash. Even when business turns around, it’ll take time for product to recover as carriers try to manage their debt burdens.
In the near-term, airlines are restoring their schedules (somewhat) on domestic routes and there are (some) more passengers willing to travel. That means competition starts to matter.
Aeroflot has been circumventing the Russian government’s ban on international passenger flights, according to media reports, by selling tickets to passengers on flights officially labeled as cargo-only.
This has included “flights to New York, Paris, London, Frankfurt, Seoul and Tel Aviv since at least early June” according to airline sources.
Once American Airlines is no longer restricted from laying off employees as a result of the CARES Act – October 1, 2020 – they will start staffing flights were fewer flight attendants. It will mean more furloughs and lower service levels.
Just before the pandemic grew out of control, American Airlines data revealed that frequent customers represented a declining share of airline revenue.
It seemed that a combination of award chart devaluation (higher prices for the best awards), product devaluations (less space per passenger on domestic narrowbody aircraft) and making status harder to earn (minimum spend requirement and taking away the ability to earn as much towards that via credit card) had in fact pushed frequent customer share of wallet towards competitors.
United’s CEO is personally approving ice, coffee and tea. That’s Scott Kirby the micro-manager, in contrast American’s CEO wasn’t involved in the decision to eliminate meals from first class on most of their domestic flights.
On Saturday I told you that a big international route announcement was coming from Americanincluding, quoting internal comments by CEO Doug Parker, “what we plan to fly next summer and what we don’t plan to fly.” That announcement is now out.
They’re revamping their international strategic focus, and bringing back many routes for summer while break-even load factors are so low thanks to the CARES Act. LAX is no longer their Pacific hub. They’re doubling down on close partnerships. And that means a lot of flight changes.
CDC Director Robert Redfield has something to say about American Airlines. He thinks it’s horrible that American will sell middle seats on planes, which he explained in response to a question by Senator Bernie Sanders, In doing so he seems not to know that American Airlines hasn’t blocked middle seats throughout the pandemic, and other airlines like United haven’t done so either.
It’s troubling that six months into the coronavirus crisis the CDC is only just now studying whether or not distancing on planes matters.
U.S. airlines eliminating inflight alcohol is as much cost-cutting as it is a coronavirus protection measure. Serving a customer tomato juice isn’t safer than serving that tomato juice with vodka. Eliminating booze in domestic economy, where airlines were charging for it, is another measure – because that eliminates the need for a payment transaction, an interaction between flight attendant and passenger. Still, American Airlines dropped alcohol service in “Main Cabin Extra” extra legroom coach, where it was previously free. Delta eliminated it even in first class as well as their “Comfort+” extra legroom coach seating. When few people were traveling, and there was little competition in service, the bet was this didn’t matter. Of course dropping meals and booze from most flights meant little reason to ‘buy up’ to a bigger seat (especially when Delta,…
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 »
