Category Archives for Airlines.
There was a medical emergency on board ten hours into China Southern’s Guangzhou – New York JFK flight on Tuesday.
An elderly passenger on board “had a swollen belly and had previously been diagnosed with an enlarged prostate” and a doctor who responded to the crew’s calls for assistance reports that he “was already showing signs of shock and they estimated that there was about a litre of urine trapped in his bladder.”
Yesterday’s Philippine Airlines Los Angeles – Manila flight declared a mayday and returned to the airport with its right engine releasing bursts of flames. The Boeing 777-300 was carrying 342 passengers and 18 crew. It was in its initial climb out when the right engine began surging. It returned to the same runway it had departed from 12 minutes earlier.
American is testing what happens when they eliminate the biggest remaining restriction on Basic Economy fares, the inability to select seats at time of booking.
If American does this they’ll pick up more seat selection revenue, fewer customers will be chased away, but much of the encouragement to buy a more expensive coach fare will be lost. Presumably this test allows American to see which factors are greatest – to see whether Basic Economy is really costing them money as currently conceived.
One of the most frequent questions I’ve gotten over the past couple of months is from American AAdvantage members with tickets for travel on LATAM, wondering whether they’ll be able to credit the flights to their AAdvantage accounts and earn miles. It looks like the ability to do so will continue through September 2020, based on new information about when LATAM will leave the oneworld alliance.
Having a variety of unique questions with free form answers is one solution. In fact, I applaud JetBlue for taking this approach. One of the questions, though, is stirring controversy on social media.
Travelers hate airline fees, whether it’s checked bag fees or change fees, so it’s a great issue for politicians to grandstand on. The FAIR Fees Act is not a serious proposal.
American viewed the Chilean portion of a LATAM joint venture as ‘not a huge piece’ and they wanted to get the agreement done with the carrier across the rest of South America – not matter what story they’re telling now, with Delta poaching the LATAM partnership.
I’m actually somewhat sympathetic to the defendant here because New York JFK is, after all, owned by the Port Authority of New York New Jersey and it’s I think it’s reasonable to assume that’s just how business is done there.
The higher rate of growth in the airline’s seat capacity next year comes from moving forward when they expect the Boeing 737 MAX to fly again. Parker, of course, has been overly optimistic on the return of the MAX before, suggesting re-certification of the plane was ‘really close’ back in May.
Paying a name chef to associate with the airline meals is a way to announce the airline cares about its food. And if consumers believe the name chef cares about their reputation at all, they won’t put their name on the food unless it meets certain standards. It’s also not very expensive for an airline to rent the chef’s name relative to the total cost of the meals provided.
A celebrity chef doesn’t guarantee a good meal, in fact if a chef is putting their names on an airline meal you should downgrade your estimation of the chef. It means they’re more interested in the revenue stream from branding than maintaining quality for the simple reason that they cannot possibly replicate the restaurant quality of their means in the air, heated in an airplane galley, and plated by US airline flight attendants.
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 »
