Airlines

Category Archives for Airlines.

Will the Real Scott Kirby Please Stand Up?

united plane
Sep 13 2019

United Airlines President Scott Kirby spoke yesterday at the Morgan Stanley 7th Annual Laguna Conference. There probably no one in the industry that’s been more ‘by the numbers’ than Kirby, and in my view no one that’s been more an enemy of customer experience. I’ve often called him a destroyer of airlines.

Yet he told the gathering that “more and more” United has to be “competing on quality instead of just schedule and price.”

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How a Coffee Spill Caused a Transatlantic Flight to Declare an Emergency

Sep 12 2019

German airline Condor was flying from Frankfurt to Cancun on February 6th when the Airbus A330 declared an emergency about 880 nautical miles west of Shannon, Ireland.

There was reported smoke in the cockpit. The “flight crew donned their oxygen masks” and declared mayday via ACARS, the digital short message system, because communications were hobbled.

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What’s the Best U.S. Airline?

southwest plane aisle
Sep 11 2019

Choose the airline with the best schedule, where they’re equivalent with the best reliability, and for regular coach comfort go with Southwest. Since I need to work inflight pretty much all the time I prefer American or Delta, United still isn’t an option though if I lived on Staten Island I’ve fly out of Newark and sacrifice productivity.

No airline is all things to all people, no airline frequent flyer program among those four carriers is a real differentiator and reason to go out of your way to fly a specific airline, but it’s useful to stick with one carrier and earn status where you can. Your miles will be earned through things other than flying and there flexible points transfer programs are best.

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American’s Approach to (Not) Releasing Award Seats

philips center
Sep 11 2019

When US Airways management took over at American they brought with them a revenue management philosophy of making far less award space available. However they’ve made efforts to make more economy award space available, bidding for space based on a fare value of miles.

International business class is another matter, even on the most lightly booked of flights.

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