Category Archives for Airlines.
Airlines don’t do enough to clean planes between flights. I feel especially bad for the cleaners who have to deal with the mess passengers leave behind.
When a customer is faced with a seat that hasn’t been properly cleaned, and can’t be prior to takeoff, I view the seat as inoperative or out of service — if the airline can’t move them, it’s tantamount to an involuntary denied boarding. Cash compensation should be due.
One Delta passenger on a recent New York – Atlanta flight was crowned the ‘Biscoff Queen’ by flight attendants who created a crown for her made of Biscoff cookies and a Delta wing pin after she had declared her deep and abiding love of the cookies inflight.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 26 other New York-area members of Congress sent a letter to American Airlines CEO Doug Parker and to the heads of the Transport Workers Union and the International Association of Machinists.
American’s mechanics and ramp workers have maintained their separate legacy US Airways and American unions, and they’re negotiating as part of an ‘association’ however each work group has different interests. Negotiations have gone badly. And the New York congressional delegation has waded into this thicket.
Over the weekend I wrote that American will fix some of the problems with its new domestic first class seats. They won’t be making changes to the new coach product.
Here’s how they defend the new coach seats — and why they may spend even more money to put in bad first class seats into planes, before ripping them out and replacing them again.
SkyTeam member Middle East Airlines was recruiting pilots – including women – in 1993. A friend showed a newspaper column to Rola Hoteit, then completing her degree in Mathematics at the American University of Beirut. It read, “Women cannot drive a car. How will they be able to fly an airplane?”
Short premium cabin flights in Europe usually come with lounge access and a decent meal but don’t give you more legroom. In contrast U.S. airlines sell lounge access separately, give you a bigger seat and a bit more room, but the food is often wretched.
I date the beginning of real cuts to domestic premium cabin meal service to early 2001.
Flight attendants respond to emergencies, bear the brunt of passenger frustrations and poor behavior, and staffing levels on some flights have been cut leading to more work. Maybe they’re underpaid.
I want to try out a very unpopular argument: that airlines pay too much for the flight attendants they’re hiring today, but that they should be paying more to attract flight attendants who will provide better service.
One of the commercials in the series, though really resonated for its potential – a businessman reclining into his seat and crashing at the start of a long flight, the voiceover talks about what he’s done on his trip. Now he’s headed home.
The airline understands the business traveler. If it makes every decision focused on how to get the passenger where they need to go, when they need to be there, in the most comfortable way possible that’s a brand purpose. It focuses decision-making around schedule and product and it tells customers who they’re going to take care of and how.
There was a rumor swirling earlier in the year that American Airlines would reverse course and start giving back some space to passengers in coach as well as seat back entertainment screens.
While there’s a report confirming some fixes to American’s new ‘Oasis’ first class, it looks like there’s no reprieve in sight for customers in the main cabin — and the fixes up front may even come at a cost to passengers looking for extra legroom economy.
Frequent flyer programs are really two separate and distinct efforts under the same banner: recognition and reward. Reward is mileage earning and redemption. Recognition consists of the (elite) benefits offered.
In the U.S. airline programs are generous by world standards in offering unsold domestic premium cabin seats as upgrades. However they aren’t as generous with service-oriented benefits.
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 »
