Category Archives for Airlines.
United operates three different routes between the U.S. and India and all three have wide open business class award space looking out into 2021 – for months at a time.
I decided to show connecting availability also because it’s worth flagging business class award space for four or more people on Swiss through Zurich and Turkish via Istanbul. There’s even Air Canada business class Delhi – Vancouver for four passengers on Tuesdays.
Even if you were forced to accept a travel vouchers you can contact United for an exchange. You were entitled to a refund if your flight was cancelled, or if the airline changed its schedule more than two hours. And United will honor this policy retroactively, even where they had previously reneged.
Lufthansa’s hypothetical thought experiment about a future world that differed from our own, in which they hadn’t cancelled the flight, might be ripe for a TV script – indeed, the writers are running out of ideas for the rest of 2020 – but carry no legal force.
United is instituting a new requirement for passengers to fly starting Tuesday, June 9. Everyone traveling on United will be required to complete a health screening as part of the check-in process, and confirm that they’re willing to wear a mask.
Under United’s new coronavirus rules I’m unlikely to ever be eligible to fly.
A key point for turning around an airline, or any business, is delivering a product customers will pay for. And when you’re not the low cost provider in the industry, you need to earn a revenue premium, and the details of the product therefore matter most.
Ten airlines combined to lose $4.65 billion on fuel hedging this year. Half of the losses belong to Lufthansa and to British Airways parent IAG. Germany bailed out a financial derivatives trading firm, as much as an airline.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao isn’t ruling out another bailout and says it’s something to discuss and consider in the fall, if airlines need one.
However there was absolutely no reason to bail out the airlines and for the overall economy – and for workers who will lose their jobs anyway – the bailouts were actually destructive. Still, the President doesn’t want mass layoffs one month before the election.
American Airlines announced a huge leadership reorganization today, resulting from its effort to shed at least 30% of management staff. A number of Vice Presidents and Senior Vice Presidents are leaving – with voluntary exit packages more generous than what’s previously been disclosed publicly as part of this program – and that has meant reshuffling leadership roles.
Research shows us that the ban on travel from China by non-U.S. residents didn’t work. I had thought it came too late because the virus was already here, but looking at details of the virus itself it appears that wasn’t true. The virus cases that actually spread came after the ban. So the ban didn’t work.
A new investigation shows why the travel ban failed, and it isn’t the partisan reasons many people think.
While it makes tremendous sense for airlines to cut back their operations significantly in the face of reduced demand, if there was one airline that didn’t do this to nearly the same extent they could benefit in an outsized manner as travel began to return.
Since they’re still paying employees anyway, still making lease payments on planes (or own them), and fuel is cheap the variable costs of flights are fairly low. If one carrier could aggregate the bulk of demand it could be a better financial strategy than shrinking.
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 »
