Category Archives for Airlines.
Often investors think that the country needs a new airline, and believe that the best business opportunity happens to be wherever they live. And they think that defunct airlines have great brands that will attract customers because they themselves remember those brands fondly.
There’s no an agreement in place with charter operator Elite Airways to provide aircraft, crew and maintenance under the Midwest Express brand.
We’ll see a return to Tel Aviv, as well as new service to Casablanca, Krakow, Prague, and Budapest.
There’s still announcements that we’ll see related to the Qantas joint venture, perhaps service changes to Tokyo Narita (since two new slots at Tokyo Haneda may not mean to net new flights and no other shifts), and routes the airline could give up on like Bologna, Italy.
I’ve previously predicted Chicago – Krakow and Philadelphia – Casablanca so I’ll still with those. (They weren’t final by any means when I heard about them.) Since there’ll be several routes announced there should be something from the Qantas JV, it’ll include Europe changes, and also bundle small ball North America stuff. I expect that changes will probably be less heavy in South America – even though airline President Robert Isom just made a trip there – pending the LATAM joint venture.
David Dao getting dragged off of a United Express flight was a worldwide moment. It focused attention on involuntary denied boardings. It generated outrage. And United, Delta and American all looked closely at their approach. United’s stock recovered quickly, passenger numbers held, and the airline continued to grow. Two years later United suffers no drag at all from David Dao, but it’s the industry that has shifted.
Back on October 16 a man flying Southwest from Los Angeles to Dallas claimed to be flirting, playing footsie with his seat opponent, and even argued that she had come on to him. She asked for a new seat though, and he got up and followed appearing to keep up his romantic pursuit.
The man, who was released on parole days before the flight, had overdosed on heroin three days prior to travel and used used methamphetamine just the day before.
Hotels encourage you to fly out for a stay while they replace single use plastic toiletries with bulk wall mounted shampoo, and offer to let you skip housekeeping, telling you these cost saving measures are out of their concern “for the environment.”
The Dutch government wants to ban flights between Brussels and Amsterdam for the environment since apparently it’s more environmentally friendly to connect at Heathrow or Frankfurt.
Ponder whether you should fly at all, while you continue to have kids and eat meat…
It’s been widely reported that United’s Glasgow – Newark flight had to be cancelled on Saturday morning when two pilots showed up to work intoxicated.
However United’s efforts to inconvenience passengers weren’t limited to two intoxicated pilots, they continued to inconvenience passengers through the decisions they made recovering from the incident as well.
As a result of bad weather Wednesday’s Tel Aviv – Newark flight diverted to Cleveland, which is no longer a United hub.
Uzbekistan Airways now has Boeing 787-8s and those have 4.7 tons greater cargo capacity than 767s. They may not be able to carry a full cargo payload when full and servicing long flights, that shouldn’t be an issue for Tashkent – London for instance. It makes sense for the carrier to consolidate operations.
However given Amazon’s penchant for growing its cargo fleet I wonder if listing the planes on Amazon Marketplace might turn out to be a more effective platform.
British Airways settled a class action lawsuit over fuel surcharges. See, these fees had nothing to do with the price of fuel (as required by the Department of Transportation). They awarded cash or miles to a whole bunch of frequent flyers, but continued charging the fees — they just stopped calling them fuel surcharges, and started calling them surcharges. In other words, extra fees that no longer even pretend to have a purpose.
While fuel surcharges aren’t a government tax, they are a tax on frequent flyers, a fee for using miles for free travel (ironic, huh?).
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 »
