Category Archives for Airlines.
God Save The Points calls out Upgrade Pack, a startup which promises discounted airline and hotel upgrades. He apologizes for giving coverage to the startup over a year ago, since they’ve raised money, hired employees and customers have paid money to the company — but there’s still no product.
Upgrade Pack responded on twitter, defending itself by arguing that they’ve been successful in raising lots of money and hiring lots of people.
San Francisco – Singapore non-stop, SQ flights 1 and 2, are on sale for 66,500 miles each way in business class. That’s a 30% discount. You need to book in February for March travel. Premium economy awards are also on sale for several routes.
Barry Michaels has been trying to start an airline for at least 28 years. First under the name Family Airlines, and then Avatar Airlines, he’s had an idea to fly Boeing 747s between leisure destinations. He went to prison for tax and securities fraud in connection with the venture. The DOT insisted at the time that he give up control of the project.
Now he says he’s sent a letter of intent to Boeing to buy 30 Boeing 747-8 aircraft, and he’ll start marketing to investors on Wednesday to raise $300 million. When he tried to raise money on IndieGogo they kicked him off.
The reason that air travel in coach isn’t as luxurious as it was 50 years ago is because of deregulation. Air travel is much less expensive. Planes are full – and the number one determinant of a pleasant flight in back is whether you have an empty seat next to you. Airlines don’t operate with the high margins they did when government prevented them from competing with each other on price. As a result they don’t invest in luxurious food to lure travelers away from competitors, since they weren’t allowed us use low prices.
If you are a oneworld sapphire member – think British Airways Silver – you get lounge access domestically within the U.S. even though American Airlines frequent flyers don’t.
In fact oneworld sapphires, which is the mid-tier elite level, get American’s Flagship lounge (international business class lounge) access on U.S. domestic itineraries. American gets a carve-out in oneworld rules so they do not have to offer this to their own members.
Government-owned Royal Air Maroc is apologizing to customers over a photo that’s gone viral in social media of a porn star wearing underwear on one of their flights. The airline says the photos have ‘menaced the reputation and values’ of the carrier.
When I made it onto the aircraft my first class seat was still empty. They were going to send the flight out with an empty first class seat, which was great for me, not great for the next person on the upgrade list.
We arrived on time and that makes American’s operational stats appear improved but the little pieces that matter to customers along the way are still a problem.
In 2015 United launched a new compensation program with staff given discretion on when to distribute the vouchers.
United has tweaked the program several times, and is now testing giving out miles instead of travel vouchers.
American Airlines had been winding down its partnership with Alaska Airlines. American viewed Alaska Airlines as a competitor once Alaska acquired Virgin America. They emphasized the substantial route overlap rather than the unique contributions of each airline.
Now they’ve done a 180 degree turn. But for this to work for American, can Alaska have such a generous frequent flyer program?
Ultimately this is long on narrative, and in the near-term relies mostly on buying carbon offsets which are questionable in effectiveness and limited in supply (if every company wanted to fully offset there wouldn’t be nearly enough opportunity to go around, so Delta is in some sense just bidding up the price of offsets that will be taking place anyway).
Noble goals, and surely they’ll make progress towards those goals, but the claim that they’ll be a carbon neutral airline next month is dubious to say the least.
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 »
