Airlines

Category Archives for Airlines.

Why Airlines Will Have to Keep Waiving Change Fees For The Foreseeable Future

by Gary Leff

Apr 11 2020

Major U.S. airlines have waived change fees for new ticket purchases, to encourage customers to spend money in a world of uncertainty. You won’t be penalized for changing plans if you buy a new ticket now and need to change it later – you’ll retain a travel credit for future purchases with the airline.

They’ve been extending the policy little-by-little, ostensibly because it might only be necessary for a short time. It won’t be. These change fee waivers on ticket purchases are going to need to continue for many months, perhaps through the end of the year. That’s not just for the convenience of passengers, but so that people will be willing to buy tickets at all.

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What The Government Wants, In Exchange For Airline Payroll Grants

by Gary Leff

Apr 10 2020

The way the law was written the administration doesn’t have to just give away all the money. While the industry and Democratic senators (at the behest of airline unions) have argued that the money shouldn’t come with requirements, the Treasury Secretary reportedly placed a call to airline CEOs laying out the requirements for the $25 billion in payroll grants.

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One U.S. Airline Now Makes Passengers Certify Their Health Before Flying

by Gary Leff

frontier plane docked
Apr 10 2020

On April 1 the President said that “they’re doing tests on airlines – very strong tests – for getting on, getting off.” It’s possible he was referring to taking passenger temperatures rather than administering COVID-19 tests. However even that isn’t happening broadly either.

Frontier doesn’t plan to start. Instead they’re making passengers promise to take their own temperatures and to wash their hands. And they’re asking flight crew to do the same.

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Delta Wants Employees To Keep Virus Test Results Secret, While American Crew Raid Planes For PPE

by Gary Leff

Apr 10 2020

Delta Air Lines has instructed flight attendants testing positive for COVID-19 to “refrain from notifying” people they’ve worked with, and not to post to social media about it. Now they say they won’t punish anyone who violates their directive.

Meanwhile American Airlines flight attendants are reportedly resorting to raiding catering carts and emergency kits for masks and gloves.

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United Airlines Pilot: I Brought Coronavirus To The U.S. Before Health Authorities Say This Started

by Gary Leff

united plane
Apr 10 2020

On January 14 the World Health Organization parroted China that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus. The next day the U.S. had its first identified case but we wouldn’t know it for six more days. New York didn’t confirm it had a case until the end of February.

Vaughn Cordle was a United Airlines Boeing 787 pilot, flying out of Beijing several times a month. He noticed an uptick in sick passengers on his flights between China and Washington Dulles as far back as December, including a co-pilot making Beijing roundtrips. He fell ill in mid-January.

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Amazon Delays Launch Of New Competitor To UPS, FedEx Because Of Coronavirus

by Gary Leff

Apr 09 2020

Amazon originally built out server capacity to handle the huge order surge for the Christmas holidays, and found that they had spare server capacity the rest of the year – and a huge capability in managing servers. So they expanded into the adjacent space of cloud computing (Amazon Web Services).

They’ve also built out a delivery and logistics shipping capacity to handle their own surges, and that gave them tons of extra capacity. Amazon delivers more of its own packages than other shipping services combined. They delivered over 3.5 billion packages last year, making their own internal shipping business two-thirds the size of UPS.

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New York Times Irresponsibly Suggests COVID-19 Was Brought To New York By Qatar Airways

by Gary Leff

qatarplane
Apr 09 2020

The lede to a piece in the New York Times on the bungled initial response to the novel coronavirus appears to suggest that the virus was first brought to New York by a Qatar Airways flight. It even further appears to suggest that if only New York had done a better job containing that first case, things would be different today. These claims make little sense.

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U.S. Government Might Take Frequent Flyer Programs As Collateral For Bailout

by Gary Leff

Apr 08 2020

If airlines are going to receive a bailout, taxpayers should receive some assurance of recovering the funds when times are good. And any deal should be structured to incentivize airlines to get out from under partial nationalization as quickly as possible.

The Treasury Department is asking airlines seeking bailout funds to detail the economics of their frequent flyer programs as one source of collateral.

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American And Alaska Advance Partnership, Reciprocal Elite Status Earning Starts Today

by Gary Leff

alaska airlines plane
Apr 08 2020

Alaska Airlines is planning to join the oneworld alliance and is scaling its partnership with American Airlines back up. Here’s some inside scoop on why American had been cutting ties with Alaska, and how they changed their mind.

The rejuvenated partnership continues to build even in difficulty times. As of today you can now earn redeemable milesand also elite status miles when crediting flights from one airline to the other airline’s progam.

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