Category Archives for Airlines.
THAThai Airways has transferred a lot of its domestic and regional flying to THAI Smile, its lower cost subsidiary which operates 20 Airbus A320 aircraft. That makes award travel to many Thai cities problematic, because THAI Smile isn’t a Star Alliance member so miles from United, Aeroplan, LifeMiles and other Star programs don’t allow redemption on THAI Smile flights.
Thai Airways itself no longer operates any narrowbody aircraft.
Delta is known for their operational reliability. But the very true saying goes ‘you get what you measure’. Since Delta doesn’t want to cancel flights they will do take extreme steps to fudge the numbers. Sometimes instead of ‘cancelling’ a flight they’ll just ‘delay’ it a day.
On May 12, it seems, an employee in operations took the edict not to cancel flights too far. The Toronto flight faced a maintenance delay, and crew at the end of their duty delay. Flight attendants were reaching the point where they would have to volunteer to keep working or the flight wouldn’t leave.
After passengers had disembarked, and the airline was moving around aircraft for the night an Airbus A321 was pushing back from gate D7 and its right wing tip struck the left rear elevator of the Boeing 737 at the next gate.
To anyone in aviation with a memory “Summer From Hell” has a very specific and unique meaning. It’s the United Airlines summer of 2000 when the airline’s pilots brought the carrier to a standstill, chasing away a million customers and extracting a huge payout from the airline.
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.
I don’t recall American publicly acknowledging this before. Yet speaking at the Bernstein 35th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference, American’s Senior Vice President of Revenue Management Don Casey said dynamic pricing of awards is a strategy they’re using to drive higher revenue from the loyalty program.
Thai Airways is planning to sell frozen Thai food to consumers mostly under the Royal Orchid Gourmet brand, “new ready-made sauces, basil stir fries and pad Thai via the Eurng Luang brand to the market.”
One of the biggest things I gave up moving from the Washington DC area to Austin is good Thai food like Elephant Jumps in Merrifield and Kao Sarn in the Eden Center. I’m not sure I’d resort to Thai Airways Royal Orchid Gourmet frozen meals, at least unless they offered Thai’s duck rick soup.
British Airways announced they’d be devaluing their award chart for partner flights with one month’s notice, but refused to tell customers what the new chart would look like. It wasn’t hard to sort out, to a close approximation what the new pricing would be — since it was already loaded into agents’ computers. The final numbers for what flights on partners other than Iberia and Aer Lingus (which are owned by the same company as British Airways) are close to what was expected, but there are some divergences. British Airways used to price premium economy, business, and first class as multiples of coach award prices. That no longer holds exactly. BA charges based on distance of each flight. If you are connecting, then each segment is priced separately based on its distance. Here’s the new…
Between Hyatt and American this new partnership should net me an additional 25,000 points per year and I’m impressed by the speed at which these partner points are posting.
Last week I wrote that the FAA would be trying to convince the world’s regulators to re-certify the Boeing 737 MAX. American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said he expects the plane to fly in ‘weeks, not months’ but that the FAA would want a critical mass of other world regulators to sign off on the plane as well as part of convincing the public that it’s safe to fly — however several countries would likely be recalcitrant for political reasons.
Now the head of standards-setting trade group the International Air Transport Association says he expects the Boeing 737 MAX to return in 10 to 12 weeks – at the earliest..
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 »
