Category Archives for Airlines.
American Airlines CEO Doug Parker was flying Southwest Airlines out of Dallas to end the week, an airline he’s called ‘the cattle car’. A flight attendant notices the book he brought on board, but not who he is. He’s not her CEO, after all.
Parker was reading White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism. During the trip the flight attendant sat down next to him, he was in an empty row, and she asked him how the book is.
In response to American’s decision to shed 30% of its management and support workforce along with similar moves by United and Delta, industry analyst and former Pan Am, TWA, and American Airlines executive Bob Mann asks why management and support roles scale up as airlines grow in the first place. This is an interesting question and I’d like to suggest an answer.
Lufthansa was given slots at congested airports – a huge government subsidy. Those slots were made perpetual property rights of the airline. That’s a barrier to competition. The E.U. has rules against subsidies. To waive them, and allow Germany to provide a $9.8 billion injection into the airline, they wanted competition, but they’re unlikely to get it.
Harrell’s cello was naturally a valuable item and he used to purchase an extra seat on the plane for the cello when he traveled. He was a Delta frequent flyer, and he thought that if the cello had a seat that the instrument should also be a member of SkyMiles accruing points for the ticket purchases. Delta warned him in 2001 that SkyMiles membership was limited to people, but Harrell persisted. He continued earning miles for his cello successfully for many years and then eventually in 2012 was banned from the SkyMiles program.
His story was featured on The Colbert Report where I appeared in defense of Delta.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby spoke at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference and spoke confidently about shedding costs and preparing for a rebound in air travel. He offered that bankruptcy isn’t a strategic option, that airlines are foolish to retire fleets too quickly, and that MileagePlus is going to be a great source of cash – whether by selling a ton of miles or borrowing against the program.
Overall (9) claims Kirby made seemed both new, compared to previous statements, and struck me as noteworthy.
British Airways notified members of a change to its frequent flyer terms and conditions to limit the ability to sue.
Mandatory arbitration, though, is so 2018 and may wind up costing British Airways a lot more than lawsuits would have.
Last night I broke the news exclusively that American Airlines would shed at least 30% of management and support staff, and I outlined the two voluntary packages being offered to most employees and what the involuntary package would look like.
A couple of correspondents – a throwaway account on Twitter, an anonymous email – complained to me that the airline had to move up their notice to employees because I had the scoop. They weren’t going to inform staff of the layoffs last night.
American Airlines is about to inform management and support staff that they expect at least 30% to be let go, according to internal documents reviewed by View From The Wing. The airline wants some of these layoffs to be voluntary, and they’re taking both a carrot and stick approach.
One of the enticements being offered is 250,000 to 350,000 American AAdvantage miles.
Ultimately “ask[ing] the Departments of Transportation and Homeland Security to come up with new protocols for security, boarding and other routines to minimize risk” will be health security theater, more designed to make people feel like the government is doing something to protect them than actually doing something to protect them, an airline marketing expense as it were.
American Airlines is extending its change fee waiver for tickets purchased in June – but only for itineraries to travel by end of September.
American seems to be saying that the lull in travel, while to some extent long lasting, is likely to bounce back. That’s at least true for leisure travel, since business travel wouldn’t be booking past September anyway. At a minimum there’s some chance that they won’t need to offer flexibility indefinitely into the future, so they’d rather offer this a little bit at a time. That makes sense, from a certain point of view.
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 »
