Category Archives for Airlines.
A Singapore Airlines passenger took to twitter to share that he had discovered his inflight entertainment system appeared to have a camera installed in it. There has been a ton of media pickup of this.
I’m not aware of any inflight entertainment systems currently in service that are actually ‘spying’ on passengers, though some airlines do have cameras in their cabins.
More premium services on offer are better and American Airlines just announced several. It can be better to buy LAX private terminal access via American, in conjunction with a premium flight, than to buy it direct. Whether helicopter transfers represent a deal is more questionable. Both offerings have been done by competitors over the past two years.
The more innovative piece is monetizing access to their excellent Flagship lounge and dining products, which is a nice perk for those interested in paying the freight. The only downside here is increased usage.
American’s Next Top Model winner Nyle DiMarco claims United Airlines had a wheelchair meet him on arrival because he’s deaf, as though that means he’s unable to walk through the airport on his own. The man also won Dancing With the Stars.
Oddly this keeps happening to DiMarco and he can’t strictly speaking just blame United here. In December he made news when Delta did the same thing. Which suggests to me the airline isn’t likely the one deciding on their own to assist him with a wheelchair.
At an employee question and answer session with American Airlines leadership this past week American’s Vice President – Planning, Vasu Raja, talked about my post about the airline’s service cuts at New York JFK. He defends focusing on flying to hubs, a limited number of international destinations, and smaller cities where they have a strong customer base.
American has withdrawn from being a player in the New York market, with each retrenchment helping to accelerate the next retrenchment. American can no longer compete for the wallet share of business customers, and is only able to pick up business on a limited set of routes. As a result customers can’t remain loyal to the carrier and pay a revenue premium to go out of their way to do so, but choose it when they represent the best choice (with their limited schedule or based on price) on a one-off basis.
Family Airlines started about 27 years ago. The idea was fly 747s between Las Vegas and Los Angeles as well as Newark, later adding cities like Miami and Honolulu.
The government refused to process an application for service, reportedly insisting that founder Barry Michaels give up control of the project. Nonetheless, he continued raising money and the SEC filed suit over a securities offering.
Last month American said that they’ve got too much Boeing 787 capacity because Europe is seasonal, they cancelled 787 flights out of Chicago, and because they keep waiting for their joint venture with Qantas to be approved which would allow them to deploy more 787s on South Pacific routes.
Last year though American ordered 47 more Boeing 787. So what are they going to do with them?
I absolutely love the international This is Ground bags, especially the tan business class bag and the first class bag.
The transcon bags don’t feel nearly as premium and differentiating transcon business and first class bags more is a miss. Nonetheless they’re perfectly fine, and of course they’re given out on flights that usually hover around six hours, not 10 or even 14. Meanwhile the premium economy bag is nice and functional.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
American Airlines executives meet with employees for question and answer sessions called Crew News. This past week an American pilot asked CEO Doug Parker about technology to connect cabin crew with all the functions of the airline to fix problems like Delta flight attendants have.
Delta flight attendants have a new update tot heir device so that they can connect and chat with ramp tower, catering, cockpit, crew schedules, passenger service and other teams. They can directly get problems addressed.
Back in December Delta introduced the ability to upgrade with miles any time — from purchase leading up to travel. Your miles are worth only about a penny apiece and they charge you the difference in fare between what you bought and the price of the more premium option.
At the time, and leading up to when this was launched, I suggested that this could replace traditional mileage awards — where there are capacity controls, the airline makes seats available for upgrade they don’t expect to sell, and you pay a fixed (discounted) mileage price for those seats.
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 »
