Category Archives for Airlines.
Historically awards between the US and New Zealand have been one of the toughest things to book. Years ago Air New Zealand used to open up business class awards 60 days prior to flight. Then they stopped. With a couple of brief exceptions there really hasn’t been meaningful Air New Zealand business class award space in years.
For the week of June 7 – 13, despite a company-wide push for exact on time departures for years and operational changes meant to improve the airline’s reliability they only managed to hit D0 57.8% of the time. That to me is horrible, even if their goal was only 64.2% (‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’).
The airline told employees that the week of June 14 – 20 “was equally as challenging as” the prior week.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
American Airlines says they are changing their approach to domestic first class meals. Here is what to expect,
This past weekend American Airlines expanded their test of letting customers prepay checked bag fees online in advance (between 4 and 24 hours prior to departure) to all 50 states for domestic itineraries. This should save customer and agent time at the airport, and ultimately save American money.
American Airlines CEO Doug Parker told employees at an internal question and answer session this week that historically they’ve started each day with an average of 35 aircraft out of service, but recently they’ve been starting out with 65 planes out of service thanks as a result of conflict with the carrier’s mechanics.
Later on he talked about how the airline’s operation is taking a toll on airport staff.
At an employee question and answer session this past week an American Airlines flight attendant asked about customer surveys after a flight. The flight attendant had recently flown business class on both American and on Air France between Santiago and Shanghai.
Despite a business class seat that dates to 2011, it’s ultimately good to see Cathay continuing to invest in its premium product. They can’t compete on cost with low fare rivals and need to leverage the premium market at their Hong Kong base. When the airline takes delivery of its first Boeing 777-9 we’ll see a new first class seat as well.
At this past week’s Crew News employee question and answer session, airline CEO Doug Parker asked Vice President of Network Planning Vasu Raja to weigh in on where they’ll fly the XLR.
Since the airline needs to put together schedules that their employees will bid to fly in September in early July they may push out the scheduled return of the 737 MAX again soon so they don’t put out “bid schedules that don’t reflect the actual flying we’re going to do.”
As a result, Parker says, “If we’re not much more certain than we are today that..it’s going to be ready on September 4, you may see us push it back another month…sometime early- to mid-July.”
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 »
