Category Archives for Airlines.
A 26 year old worker at the Havana airport stowed away in the baggage hold of a Swift Air charter flight to Miami.
Apparently witnesses heard “what sounded like a dog barking in the cargo area” and upon investigation found the man who “asked for water.”
Scott is a Southwest Airlines agent in Phoenix. The day after a United Airlines passenger was dragged off a flight in Chicago, he came up with a song to let passengers know they were valued – and wouldn’t be dragged off on Southwest.
Now he greets arriving flights with his song, to the tune of the theme to The Golden Girls, it’s “Thank You for Flying Southwest”
Cathay Pacific’s CEO Rupert Hogg, and the airline’s Chief Commercial Officer, have resigned. Hogg has been well-regarded in the role, driving a turnaround in the airline’s finances.
Ultimately the move is harmful to China’s ability to maintain Hong Kong as a business center, showing how the state will meddle in corporate affairs rather than adhering to “one country two systems.”
It was like US Airways flight 1549 – the Miracle on the Hudson – but in a field. A Ural Airlines Airbus A321 suffered a serious bird strike on takeoff from Moscow Zhukovsky airport. The flight was headed to Simferopol in the Ukraine and had 226 passengers and 7 crew on board.
The crew of the Ural Airlines aircraft did a truly heroic job landing their aircraft, wheels up in a field, keeping the fuselage intact. And fortunately there did not appear to be fuel leaking from the engines. Walking away from this is really special.
Delta continues to double down on passenger entertainment not just for international flights but across its domestic fleet. They’re now over 700 aircraft offering seat back entertainment screens.
United and American have been moving in the opposite direction. They have eschewed screens to save money – about a million dollars per aircraft – offering streaming content that customers can view on their own devices. In most cases this means passengers watching movies on phones.
It was one fateful phone call with Boeing — while Southwest founding President Lamar Muse and co-founder Rollin King were meeting with the Douglas Aircraft Company — that led the airline to go with the 737.
Now they have over 750 of the aircraft. However they could look beyond the Boeing 737 for their future.
Norwegian is cheap flying, but when things go wrong it isn’t known for great customer service. Mistakes happen, but the test of an airline is how they respond when they do.
When they delivered an 82 year old woman in a wheelchair to the wrong gate she missed her flight. And they told her she’d have to buy a new ticket as a no show passenger.
Airline CEO Doug Parker says he wears a wrist band “that says CECFTM, which is a terrible acronym because it doesn’t say anything, but it stands for Create an Environment that Cares for our Frontline Team Members. That’s what our mission is. Every day one of our officers sends a note to other officers about what they did that day to create an environment that cares for frontline team members.”
On Tuesday what they did is sue their employees again.
It turns out that filming flight attendants is especially prevalent in Japan, where a Japanese union representing cabin crew at Japan Airlines, ANA and other carriers says that 60% of their members have been filmed while on duty.
Some of the videographers are really creepy, too.
Last week a man documented the experience of flying Delta from Aspen to Salt Lake City by himself aboard Delta Express flight DL3652 operated by SkyWest. Boarding was announced at the gate as being for him. He captures the surreal experience of a predeparture announcement being made over the PA system by a flight attendant when he’s the only one in the cabin. He gets to meet the pilots. He’s sitting up front, with a predeparture beverage.
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 »
