Category Archives for Airlines.
Since I earned the full year’s status through last year’s challenge, during the back half of 2018, I assumed I would have the status for all of 2019 and I’d be able to spend all of 2019 requalifying in order to keep the status for 2020. However, oddly, that’s not how this works.
Over the summer the carrier cancelled more flights than anyone, faced not just with a mechanics’ job action but also too much deferred maintenance and management failure to deploy parts where they were needed.
However the month of September was American’s best in two years based on the most important metric of on-time arrivals.
As far as I can tell only American schedules LaGuardia departures before 6 a.m. While it’s desirable to get out ahead of other airlines to be first in the departure queue at the crowded airport, those flights push back and… wait. It’s unclear to me the benefit of pushing back more than 5 and 10 minutes early.
As if it’s not hard enough to get through on the phone when bad weather hits as it is, American Airlines is closing their Reno reservations office, and eliminating home-based reservations agents.
When a President expresses ‘full confidence’ in a member of their cabinet, the cabinet secretary’s days are numbered. There aren’t even leaks out of the American Airlines Board of Directors right now expressing ‘full confidence’ in CEO Doug Parker.
Pakistan has taken a step farther than the rest of the world in the War on Plastic. Airlines flying to Pakstian are no longer allowed to use plastic cutlery inflight.
What’s more, airlines haveo been directed that they cannot transport cutlery in plastic sacks either and must instead wrap them in paper.
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.
Right now though there is peak business class award space, a little in November and January but quite a lot in December, on Air New Zealand between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston and Auckland.
Mandating more of the space on each aircraft go to each passenger is a bad idea that will drive up prices and make travel less safe.
While United certainly hasn’t promised that won’t ever change, they haven’t made any changes to their thinking. For now this appears to be a false alarm, but without published award charts the program in effect makes no promises as all about the future. Even though this FAQ answer doesn’t suggest the program is being devalued, we can assume that’s the direction it will continue to head.
American tells me that there are no further changes to reciprocal lounge access or what’s left of their codesharing relationship at that time. The change this coming March is that neither airline’s frequent flyer members will be able to redeem their miles for travel on the other carrier any longer.
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 »
