Category Archives for Airlines.
Continuing the theme that employees just need motivation rather than resources or tools to do a good job, American Airlines has “One Team, One Turn champions” who are managers “with the mission of underlining the direct correlation between on-time performance and customer experience.”
At Chicago that’s meant quizzing employees on the parking shuttle.
Frequent flyer program revenue – and in particular the sale of miles to banks – is the biggest driver of US airline profitability. However United’s MileagePlus is stagnating. Their revenue growth can be accounting for entirely by points transfers from Chase Ultimate Rewards. As Chase Sapphire Reserve gained popularity that meant more points earned which could be transferred to United.
British Airways has quietly launched new extra business class award availability between North America and the UK for additional miles. US airlines generally offer all or most seats on their flights for additional miles, it used to be roughly double miles but now is often much more especially in premium cabins.
BA, which normally offers double miles awards to ‘Gold Guest List’ elites, is offering this for less than double miles.
The stock symbol ‘UAL’ represents “United Continental Holdings Inc” which is the parent company of United Airlines as well as businesses like Air Micronesia, Century Casualty Company, and Covia LLC which is itself the parent of Mileage Plus Holdings, Mileage Plus Marketing, and Mileage Plus.
United Airlines, United Technologies and Boeing were all once the same company, broken apart by the federal government in the mid-1930s.
This spring American Airlines CEO Doug Parker told employees in Phoenix at a Crew News session that he only sought to merge US Airways with another carrier when it became necessary to survive since United and Continental had merged and Delta and Northwest had merged. He said that doing so was always about how to create an airline that would always be there for employees, and not for himself.
That was in response to an employee who asked Parker about his legacy and how he’d want to be remembered.
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.
For the week of June 7 – 13, despite a company-wide push for exact on time departures for years and operational changes meant to improve the airline’s reliability they only managed to hit D0 57.8% of the time. That to me is horrible, even if their goal was only 64.2% (‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’).
The airline told employees that the week of June 14 – 20 “was equally as challenging as” the prior week.
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 says they are changing their approach to domestic first class meals. Here is what to expect,
This past weekend American Airlines expanded their test of letting customers prepay checked bag fees online in advance (between 4 and 24 hours prior to departure) to all 50 states for domestic itineraries. This should save customer and agent time at the airport, and ultimately save American money.
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 »
