Category Archives for Airlines.
In the least surprising move in the history of earth United announced that the are going to require a same day boarding pass for travel on United, another Star Alliance airline, or “a contracted partner” in order to access their clubs.
United no longer needed to treat its customers better, since competitors won’t. As with Delta and American, United’s lounge access is really sold on a subscription basis rather than being a ‘club membership’.
British Airways doesn’t have a competitive business class product. On their Boeing 777s seating is eight across, middle seats are especially intimate and passengers in the window climb over the feet of their seat opponents.
We now know a little more about what’s to come for business class, first class, and even the direction of how many seats they’re going to offer.
The President of United Airlines thinks airfares should be twice as expensive as they are today. United’s CEO Oscar Munoz takes things a step further: paying United Airlines more is good for you.
His argument is that more money for the airline means more money to invest in the product. You as the customer benefit even if you “don’t always understand.” He has things exactly backwards.
I appreciate that American still has an award chart that they are willing to publish. I appreciate that they mostly stick to it. However they stick to it only as long as there isn’t an exception, that they do not tell customers about.
Back in April British Airways parent company IAG acquired just under 5% of Norwegian and started talks to acquire the discount carrier. I assumed that acquire meant smother it so that the airline wouldn’t keep depressing transatlantic fares, especially out of cities like London.
Chairman Willie Walsh addressed a Norwegian deal at their investor day.
Delta hasn’t been nearly as aggressive buying new aircraft as American. Instead of replacing their Boeing 767-400 fleet they’re actually going to invest heavily in it. In fact the 767-400s are going to get Delta One Suites (business class seats with doors).
Last month Delta CEO Ed Bastian answered an ‘Ask Ed Anything’ employee question about Boeing 767-400s interior refurbishments starting this winter.
VietJet’s CEO became Southeast Asia’s first self-made female billionaire. The airline is a discount carrier flying narrowbody aircraft mostly domestically although with several routes now into Asia.
Five years ago the airline was fined 20 million Dong over unapproved inflight entertainment. It wasn’t a problem with the installation of a seatback video system. Instead, 5 bikini-clad candidates in a local beauty contest performed a dance onboard the airline’s inaugural flight to Nha Trang.
Last Tuesday Delta CEO Ed Bastian responded to an employee question in an ‘Ask Ed Anything’ video about whether the airline would ever acquire used Boeing 777s.
Delta created a lot of controversy 3 years ago when then-CEO Richard Anderson claimed the airline would buy a used Boeing 777 for $7.7 million. He claimed there was a ‘huge bubble’ in used widebodies and that a 10 year old Boeing 777-200 was worth about $10 million.
Two years ago a black female doctor responded to a medical emergency on a flight and Delta flight attendants rejected the help, not believing she could be a doctor.
Delta said it ‘didn’t reflect their culture’. Delta apologized and assured that they had changed their policies to prevent this from happening again. Except…
Singapore Airlines has announced a fourth US city with non-stop Singapore service: Seattle. That will mean they’ll fly non-stop from Newark, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle — in addition to flying Houston – Manchester, UK – Singapore and New York JFK – Frankfurt – Singapore.
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 »
