Category Archives for Airlines.
While there’s certainly been consolidation in the airline industry as America West acquired US Airways and then American; Delta acquired Northwest; Continental acquired United; Southwest acquired AirTran and Alaska Airlines acquired Virgin America this hasn’t led to higher prices for consumers. Government should remove barriers to competition, but it’s a stretch to suggest that the several large airlines in today’s industry constitute anything close to monopoly.
American Airlines produced a report for employees on the carrier’s progress towards its 2019 goals. One item that stood out – apart from the airline’s operational problems this year – is that customer “likelihood to recommend” scores have fallen.
The airline attributes this to its reliability challenges, although it’s equally notable that American compares themselves to just before they began retrofitting domestic aircraft to a new less comfortable standard.
When Oscar Munoz took over from disgraced United Airlines CEO Jeff Smisek the airline rolled out modest customer experience improvements as part of an overall attempt to change the narrative of the airline.
Illy coffee and Stroopwafels turned out to be a perfect match, made better together. And for the Stroopwafel it changed their entire business trajectory.
American Airlines is expected to eliminate the “close in booking fee” on awards, the $75 per ticket charge for booking award travel within 21 days of departure (which is currently waived for AAdvantage elite frequent flyers using miles from their own account).
For program members as a whole eliminating close-in booking fees will be a good thing though the underlying program changes that lead the fee to no longer make sense are a negative overall.
It’s always a good idea to understand and verify the taxes and surcharges that a frequent flyer program is trying to charge you when redeeming your miles. I’ve caught several overcharges from American Airlines over the years, for instance.
Southwest, American, and United have all announced that they’re cancelling Boeing 737 MAX flights into early November although the truth is they don’t know when it will fly again. Each previous cancellation has been followed by another one.
Except… while United announced that they were pulling the 737 MAX from their schedule, they apparently forgot to actually do it.
I’ve certainly written the most about the mechanics slowdown component of this issue. It’s what employees and the company have been most vocal about. But even without that the operation would still be suffering. And the reason to get a joint contract done isn’t just to end the animosity (an odd place to be for a company claiming its culture is its competitive advantage), it will also reduce the friction in getting legitimate maintenance work accomplished — on ex-US Airways aircraft by legacy American Airlines employees and vice versa.
Even so, the airline will have to invest in clearing deferred maintenance items. It will have to stock the parts needed to keep the fleet flying. In the meantime they’re still planning to re-start their domestic narrowbody densification program next year, so they’ll be taking additional aircraft out of service. It may be awhile for the airline’s operation to recover even after they get a deal done with mechanics and there’s little indication at this point that a deal is close.
This morning Edward Russell noted at the Points Guy that Delta earned more revenue than American in the last quarter, and United has more seat capacity than both. The title of his post, “American Airlines Loses World’s Largest Airline Title to Delta and United.”
Lucky at One Mile at a Time picks this up, while noting American has a larger fleet and more employees. He suggests American’s personnel count “is just to say that they aren’t very efficient.”
During the American Airlines second quarter earnings call they offered several metrics of success for their AAdvantage loyalty program. They offered that redemptions are up; their elite population has increased; yield growth among their elites outpaces the airline’s average; co-brand credit card acquisition and spend is up.
What’s going on here?
Air Canada placed a 71 year old woman and a man half her age into a single hotel room when they both misconnected after a flight delay, even though the two passengers didn’t know each other.
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 »
