Category Archives for Airlines.
With Americans being told not to travel abroad, and non-residents who have been in Europe over the past 14 days not permitted to travel to the U.S., American Airlines has reduced its transatlantic and transpacific flying to three routes total.
However supply chains matter as much – probably more – than ever before, as anyone who has tried to get toilet paper in the last week can probably attest.
No airline has done as much to keep customers whose travel has been disrupted from getting refunds as United Airlines has. However they’re not the only bad actor. British Airways intentionally deceived customers about their refund rights.
I’ve been asked by several readers why they aren’t getting points and taxes back on Avios award bookings. Here’s the trick you need to know to get what the rules entitle you to.
Real customers have come up with inventions to improve the inflight experience. They’re not always uncontroversial. The knee defender keeps the passenger in front of you from reclining but has also led to conflicts. Less so the armrest splitter or the spAIRtray which gives you a little ledge beside the window seat that you install in the aircraft window.
Now comes a new innovation truly for our times: a stick on, peel off faux stained glass window to create ambiance in the cabin, help you pray, and stand between you and germs on the window.
In London just in advance of travel restrictions going into effect, American Airlines President Robert Isom traveled across the Pond to speak to employees there. American employees nearly 1000 people in the U.K.
He spoke at the British Airways headquarters at Waterside, and said that while they aren’t going to spend “even a dollar” that they do not have to, they owe it to customers not to degrade the inflight experience and that the company is “prepared to weather any type of storms that come up and says there’s “enough cash on hand to weather downturns in the business.” And that was before they picked up another billion dollars just today. Still they want to ensure that if the government is handing out money, they’re well-positioned to get some.
It appears that things aren’t on the verge of going back to full normal in just a couple of months – and what we think of as full normal might even change.
Former White House Chief of Staff and former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is known for saying ‘never let a crisis go to waste.’ It’s an opportunity to push an agenda. So as the airline bailout train leaves the station some people are advocating the consumer protection rules that they wanted anyway. Others (like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) want the financial reforms they want anyway.
If you hate air travel you want to use this crisis to nationalize the airlines, an idea put forward by the left wing American Prospect.
American Airlines interlines a lot of passengers from Philippine Airlines at Los Angeles. They’re picking up a lot of passengers each day from Manila and sending many of them onward to Manila. Now American and Philippine Airlines have filed for permission to codeshare.
American Airlines still expires miles in your account if you don’t have activity for 18 months. They have not paused this even though travel has slowed down for so many. There are simple ways to make sure your miles don’t expire.
Airline bailouts are a bad idea. Stockholders should take a haircut before taxpayers. Airline bankruptcy does not present contagion risk to the economy. Airlines have flown through bankruptcy successfully – American, Delta, and United have all done it. And any help for workers should address the needs people face independent of industry.. Working for an airline isn’t ‘more special’ than some other job.
However there are very bad ideas circulating around new conditions to impose in exchange for a bailout.
United’s April flight schedule is down 60% year-over-year; an 85% decrease for international (and greater than that for transatlantic and transpacific) and a 42% for U.S. and Canada flying.
It’s easier to list the international flights that are actually operating than those that aren’t. Domestically there are a lot of cuts but United emphasizes they’ve only completed stopped flying to one U.S. airport
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 »
