Category Archives for Airlines.
Star Alliance member Air India reportedly hasn’t been paying its jet fuel bills and now can’t gas up at six airports in the country.
It’s great to see the airline deploying their new premium-heavy 46 business class seat 767s aggressively, and not just out of Newark or even on pure business routes.
The new Polaris business class seat is a competitive advantage not because it’s better than what Delta, American, or Air France offer – or what British Airways or Virgin Atlantic will offer – it isn’t. It generally lags all of those. However they’re able to offer fully flat direct aisle access business class seats, attractively designed, using less cabin space. That allows them to fit more seats into the same footprint, or add seats without taking out as many from a lesser cabin.
With as full as flights are these days, if your United transatlantic flight out of Newark cancels I could easily see the airline not being able to get you out for three days. Then you’d be stuck spending three days in Newark. I’d say you could pitch the story to the airline’s magazine, but somebody already did that.
For as long as I can remember United’s Hemispheres inflight magazine has included a feature “Three Perfect Days” Well, now you can win three perfect days in… Newark.
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.
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 »
