Category Archives for Airlines.
We do not need a vaccine to travel again. Widespread availability of a vaccine is probably two years away even if it’s developed in a year, since it has to be manufactured and distributed at massive scale. However a gimmick like an immunity passport, given our limited knowledge of the virus right now, isn’t likely to get us back in the sky.
So don’t get infected just because you think recovering from the virus will help you to travel, because it probably won’t.
President Trump has an idea to help the airlines make it through to the future, while getting a deal for taxpayers: pay up front for several years of travel, but get a bigger discount from the airlines for doing it.
You can cancel an American Airlines award ticket online – there’s a cancel link in your account’s itineraries. Cancelling, through, doesn’t put miles back into your account. To get miles redeposited you’ve had to call American – until now, under certain limited conditions.
The advice with LifeMiles – which has a good award chart, no fuel surcharges, and sells miles cheap – has long been to buy what you need to use right away, not to invest in the program long term.
Italy has been pumping cash into perennial loss-maker Alitalia for years, despite European Union rules against subsidizing a national carrier. Other airlines have burned through capital with ownership stakes in the airline – Air France and Etihad – but they’ve been burned and other carriers were gun shy to take over given losses of 2 million euros a day even before things began going down hill for the entire aviation industry.
The Italian government wouldn’t stand up to the airline’s unions, and without lowering costs no one was willing to come to a deal to take over the failed airline. Now they’re going to nationalize the carrier and they claim that will make it profitable. They will also consider dropping their partnership with Delta.
While Deloitte, as administrator, seeks to find new money to restart the carrier, it’s also going to be restructuring the airline’s debts. Since Virgin Australia reportedly owes about US$10 million to the Perth airport in unpaid fees, the airport decided to block a Boeing 737-800 from taking off as a way of physically securing their claim – using a bulldozer.
The U.S. government is clear that airlines must refund passengers whose flights are cancelled. The European Union is clear on this too but airlines have ignored their rules. In fact, European airlines have offered refunds to Americans (or where itineraries touch the U.S.) but not for Europeans (travel that doesn’t touch the U.S.).
Canada had been clear that airlines do not have to refund passengers for cancelled flights. Fortunately they are backtracking from that position.
It would be actually be shocking if there haven’t been discussions at each U.S. airline around what a bankruptcy filing might look like. Chapter 11 bankruptcy doesn’t mean ceasing operations. It means freezing obligations and restructuring its debts. And one of the things that would be looked at in any bankruptcy is the airline’s labor contracts.
However the specifics of this rumor are utter nonsense.
Taking money from poor people in Africa to give to airlines is bat crazy. GDP per capita in Sub-Saharan Africa (2018) was US$1586. In some countries it’s much lower. 18 countries in Africa are already at their capacity for debt. Safe drinking water strikes me as a higher priority than airline subsidies, and in the current pandemic I’d focus more on lack of testing and lack of ventilators and personal protective equipment than giving it to failed airline executives.
The Wall Street Journal had reported that both Delta and United were in talks to do this again with their credit card partners, but Ed Bastian appears to deny this is the case. There was some reference during the airline’s earnings call that the government could take part of SkyMiles as collateral for a subsidized CARES Act loan although nothing was definitive.
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 »
