Category Archives for Airlines.
BA announced the roll out schedule for their new business class seat. They hadn’t previously shared that Airbus A380s would ever get the new seat, though now we know they will. However the timetable to put new seats on their planes also reveals that it’ll be 2025 before the project is completed and that’s just for aircraft based at London Heathrow (and not Gatwick).
British Airways parent IAG held their version of Investor Day on Friday. The presentation (.pdf) clearly wasn’t geared towards customers, focused as it was on cost-cutting and promising not to grow their flights. They’ve always been probably too candid, even, at these events in describing how they plan to separate customers from their money.
Air Canada flight AC125 from Toronto to Vancouver was forced to divert to Seattle last Sunday due to fog and two failed landing attempts. The plan was to refuel and make another attempt. However passengers got stuck in Seattle when the 787 went out of service for maintenance. Everyone was given hotel rooms for the night.
Some passengers on board began to worry over what would happen to their pot?
American Airlines has done a great job adding fast internet across their fleet. Connectivity – and thus inflight productivity – is a great reason to choose American (or Delta) over competitors.
There are, however, a few challenges, including the ‘dark’ legacy US Airways 757s and poor-performing international wifi from Panasonic.
On Wednesday American Airlines flight AA4439 from Atlanta to New York LaGuardia, an Embraer ERJ-175 (large regional jet) operated by Republic Airways, suffered runaway trim during climb out. “Runaway trim” became a well known phenomenon over the last year as it’s associated with both Boeing 737 MAX crashes.
Listening to the air traffic control – the pilots and ATC both did an excellent job – is eerie. Thank goodness everyone made it safely back to Atlanta.
United has now done something that seems like it could be following Delta’s model. They’ve filed Economy Plus fares that treat their extra legroom seats as a separate cabin. These fares come with free Economy Plus seat assignments, rather than paying extra for extra legroom seats.
A year and a half ago United Airlines President Scott Kirby shared a plan with investors to offer a separate ‘domestic premium economy’ product. This could be the start of that plan.
Avios is a driver of profit, strong relative to size and regulation, but does less of a good job driving airline revenue that one would expect. Most program members are inactive, which isn’t surprising, and members prefer inflated award costs of cash co-pays (fuel surcharges).
For the past few months there been a glitch with certain awards booked on the American Airlines website, where baggage allowance information wasn’t being added to tickets. The airline doesn’t have a solution yet, but they’re taking action to avoid spreading the problem.
Delta CFO Paul Jacobson spoke at the Baird 2019 Industrial Conference this morning, throwing shade at American’s CEO Doug Parker and talking up how his airline has transformed the way it sells elements of the flight experience that used to be available for no charge for passengers often on a first-come, first-served basis.
Star Alliance program Avianca LifeMiles will sell you miles and is offering up to a 145% bonus through November 12.
You can fly business class to Europe for 63,000 miles each way or Southeast Asia for 78,000. First class (Lufthansa) is 87,000 miles each way between the US and Europe. And that’s before special deals or cutting the cost with lower-cabin connecting flights.
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 »
