Category Archives for Airlines.
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.
Business class saver awards can be a challenge using American AAdvantage miles. American rarely releases saver inventory on their own planes, and they don’t have as many partners as United does (Star Alliance is bigger than oneworld).
Finding business class awards for more than one or two people is even harder. So when there’s business class award space to Asia for a family of four that’s really notable.
American Airlines CEO Doug Parker spoke this morning at the Baird 2019 Global Industrial Conference, making the case for why the airline’s financial performance will improve. His message seemed to boil down to: we’re going to do what other airlines are doing, so our performance should revert towards the mean. In other words, by copying other airlines, if they make money American should too.
Airlines frequently offer elite status buy back (pay to get this past year’s status) or buy up (pay to get a higher status) offers. On their face they seem expensive. Here’s how to know whether they’re right for you.
There are two questions to ask about the elite status you’re considering.
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 »
