Category Archives for Airlines.
Beginning November 1, both United Airlines and American Airlines will follow Delta and restrict access to their clubs to members who are flying the airline or one of its designated partners the same day.
Delta still lets lifetime club members have the access benefit they purchased. United and American have publicly said they will not, adding the new access restriction even for those members. However American told employees they’re reconsidering.
The good news for American Airlines investors, employees, and customers is that – outside of the potential for United to introduce functional inflight internet – American has more potential to improve than any other U.S. airline. And there are clear steps that would make it better.
American just announced details of their Tokyo Haneda flights at the end of last week. They still have an announcement of new routes with Qantas coming up. But right after losing their LATAM partnership they’ve rushed out an announcement of new service to South America, and packaged it with other disparate scheduling moves – perhaps to make it look more robust.
After all, announcing a move by IAG low cost carrier LEVEL makes little sense when that airline isn’t even a partner.
Mainland China forced Cathay Pacific to fire its CEO, a scalp on the wall over the airline’s insufficient initial deference to the mainland during mass protests in Hong Kong.
The Chinese government placed onerous restrictions on the airline’s flying in order to pressure the carrier to purge employees sympathetic to anti-Beijing efforts. These efforts worked to bring the airline into line, and it’s created a culture of fear at the carrier.
Yesterday Delta announced an offer to assist passengers stranded by American Airlines as their partnership with LATAM breaks up.
Now Delta has flushed their offer announcement down the memory hole.
Last year a Japanese airport employee was filmed actually cleaning luggage before passengers picked up their bags. Each and every bag gets checked for scuffs or marks on arrival, then the employee takes a white cloth to those bags which need it.
So it’s no surprise to see this Japan Airlines employee making sure every bag is laid symmetrically on the belt at baggage claim.
After the shocking announcement that Delta will buy 20% of Latin America’s largest airline LATAM while that carrier will leave the oneworld alliance and their joint venture with American is off, strange things started happening.
Forget about bad opinions, for over 15 years Christopher Elliott has been writing columns that get their facts wrong. His pieces haven’t gotten any better as the years have gone on.
He keeps making weak arguments that attempt to use air travel as a vehicle for his claims about social inequality (even when the details don’t work, especially since loyalty programs give customers access to perks that would normally only be available to the wealthy) and telling readers to quit frequent flyer programs for years without correcting his errors or updating his facts.
The American Airlines Flagship Lounge Philadelphia project is about to get underway. After much delay, the airline’s Philadelphia Flagship lounge project kicks off Monday. The A-West Admirals Club closes September 30 to start construction on the Flagship lounge, and it’s expected to open in 2020.
LATAM’s Chairman gave an interview in Spanish where he dished on when LATAM started talking to Delta, the timeline for shifting their partnerships, and which one’s they’re going to retain — as well as when they broke up with American Airlines.
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 »
