Category Archives for Airlines.
Singapore Airlines has opened its latest batch of 30% off KrisFlyer awards for April travel, and this month’s deals are especially useful for U.S.-based travelers. The discounted routes include flights touching New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle — and not just to Singapore, but also to Europe and Asia.
American Airlines was reportedly offering passengers as much as $4,000 each to volunteer off an oversold flight to Aspen, a stunning number for a carrier that usually avoids paying much to solve these problems. The twist is that saying yes may have been the best deal in the cabin, because the original flight later diverted to Grand Junction and passengers wound up finishing the trip to Aspen by bus.
Ryanair spent months refusing to pay a delayed passenger money she was legally owed, until an Austrian court bailiff walked onto one of its Boeing 737s and put the aircraft under seizure. The debt was just $1,182, but the scene at Linz Airport turned a routine turnaround into a warning about what can happen when airlines ignore passenger compensation orders.
United flight attendants appear close to finally getting a new contract after more than five years without a raise, but the price of that deal may be something unions almost never surrender: scope. A reported trade for pay on the ground could give United room to own a regional airline outright.
American Airlines customer service agents have filed a class action attempt alleging the company routinely took unpaid labor—auto-deducted lunch breaks even when agents kept working, and timekeeping “rounding” that shaved minutes off the start and end of shifts. The catch is that airlines often sit in a special federal carve-out that can block overtime claims entirely, so the lawsuit may turn less on whether the conduct happened and more on whether the law even lets them recover.
Emirates and Qatar are still flying some remarkably light loads as traffic to Dubai and Doha dries up during the regional conflict. In at least two reported cases, passengers found themselves with what travelers almost never get: an entire first or business class cabin effectively to themselves.
United’s Polaris amenity kit is branded so heavily “Brooks Brothers” that you can miss the airline’s name entirely—and that’s not an accident. It’s because of the economics of these kits: in many partnerships the brand is subsidizing (or outright paying for) the pouch and products to get captive exposure to high-income travelers.
United Airlines is teaming up with Netflix’s Chef’s Table to launch 10 new long haul Polaris meals on August 1, curated by a roster of chefs from the airline’s hubs and international gateways. That is more than a menu refresh. It is a public signal that United knows its business class food has been underwhelming and now wants customers to expect something better.
Delta has finally disclosed its plan to return to Manila, telling the Department of Transportation that it wants to launch daily Los Angeles service next summer with an Airbus A350-900. But it revealed the route in an unusual way — by urging the U.S. government to delay Philippine Airlines planned Chicago flight until Delta can secure better slot access at Manila airport.
As airports across the Middle East shut down because of the Iran war, Gulf Air is doing something few national carriers ever have to do: moving planes and passengers to another airport and continuing service from there. It sounds extraordinary, but history offers several examples of airlines that lost their home base to war and kept flying from somewhere else — sometimes in another country, sometimes from a different region of the world.
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 »
