Category Archives for Airlines.
Air Canada, along with Aeroplan’s banking partners CIBC, TD, and Visa, came to an agreement to buy Aeroplan from Aimia.
That gives Air Canada its members to market to right away, and it eliminates expected new major competition between the two from the marketplace before it even begins.
United Airlines President Scott Kirby tried several passenger-unfriendly innovations when he was President at US Airways that he ultimately had to roll back like elimination of free water in coach and elimination of elite bonus miles for flights.
There are airlines that managed to successfully move to a policy of charging for water. They don’t charge for lavatory use, is water a similar basic necessity that airlines should provide for free?
I’ve been on flights where an announcement was made at the start of flight that the internet didn’t work — only to find that it worked just fine. That worked out great, not only was there internet but no one else was trying to use it so I had plenty of bandwidth.
I’ve also been on plenty of flights where internet doesn’t work and the crew was aware of this from the prior flight but didn’t say anything until we were up in the air. That’s frustrating because I’d have treated the half hour I was on the plane (on the ground, still with connectivity) differently.
Flight crew are responsible for our safety during travel, and they’re usually highly responsible. We trust them.
Because flight crew are trusted they get less scrutiny at security checkpoints and at immigration and customs. That makes them ideal mules.
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.
Two months ago oil reached the level it had been at in November 2014 — which itself was one-third off its May 2011 high. However since then the price of oil has been falling — down about 20% in the past two months.
Oil prices began falling within days of US airlines raising checked bag fees claiming this was due to high fuel prices.
For Black Friday last year they offered miles at 1.77 cents apiece and they did that the year before too. So it’s no surprise they have a Black Friday offer so sell miles at 1.77 cents apiece again through November 26.
It’s this success that left me perplexed — why would airlines continually devalue their frequent flyer programs? These are highly profitable multi-billion dollar businesses. Yet each cut risks undermining that business. Now this very warning comes from inside the industry.
Loyalty program executives — and their airline bosses — need to realize just what’s at stake: “As more full-service airline loyalty programs strip away benefits, devalue the currency and make it more challenging to earn meaningful rewards, the cracks in the dam will continue to grow, more rapidly, until one day the game will be over and full-service airline loyalty programs, and their billions in revenues – begin to wash away.”
The U.S. is the world’s aviation largest market — by a lot. The EU as a whole is larger than Chinese market. The UK is the biggest aviation market in Europe, so perhaps Brexit will be what causes China to grow larger than Europe.
Japan is a bigger market than India, though a decade from now will that still be the case? India has nearly doubled in the past seven years. (So has China.)
We know that mechanics are unhappy about their inability to get a new contract and anecdotally have been causing some of the airline’s operational challenges. Flight attendants are embarrassed by the new domestic product that the airline offers. Perhaps survey data that can be seen in a spreadsheet will underscore some of what employees have been telling management each month already.
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 »
