Category Archives for Airlines.
We hope not to be burdens on our children. Many people would choose not to let themselves reach the point where they don’t know who they are and can’t function independently. But we try to extend lives, and the burdens on families and on society for costs, are significant.
So we wind up with people sent to the airport, where the best we can hope for is a compassionate United Airlines employee to see that they’re taken care of.
In the spring American Airlines started offering free alcoholic beverages to passengers seated in their extra legroom Main Cabin Extra seats, copying Delta (although Delta offers snacks too). American’s flight attendants have expressed frustration.
They’ll say they’re concerned about customers drinking too much, but the real concern appears to be having to do more work.
American Airlines has a new cheeseburger in domestic first class at lunch.
A year ago United upgraded their condiments in a deal with Sir Kensington. United then added Sir Kensington chipotle mayo this summer. American is using these same exact condiments — which are good but exhibit a sad lack of originality.
When American Airlines rolled out their ‘Concept D’ business class seat with the Boeing 787-8 and on some Boeing 777-200s there were several problems.
One is that the dividers between the center seats would break. Instead of fixing them American simply locked them in place in the ‘up’ position — and then ordered their new business seats without dividers at all.
I really want on a domestic flight is to get where I’m going safely with enough space to work and functional internet. Once I’ve hit that basic I’d like to be treated like a human being rather than self-loading cargo.
Other passengers have different priorities.
They say any flight you walk away from is a good flight. But out of flights that all passengers walked away from this one may have been the worst: Air France stranded 282 passengers for three days. In Siberia. Oh, and they had no Russian visas so required constant police monitoring.
Last Thursday a Ryanair Boeing 737 was preparing to depart Bordeaux, France for London Stansted airport when French authorities stopped the aircraft, prevents passengers from boarding, and seized the jet.
France offered the subsidies illegal. Ryanair complied with its obligations. And France gets its money back?
Delta announced restrictions on accessing their airport lounges, limiting use to passengers flying the airline or one of its partners same day. Club members could no longer use their club unless also paying Delta or its partners additional money to travel.
So American announced that same restriction. And a couple of weeks later, surprising no one in the known universe, United followed. American also announced an increase in club prices.
Winter is a rough time for the US travel industry all around. Business travel dries up and hotel occupancy falls. That’s not good for airlines either. Leisure travel is heavy around the holidays, and among passengers looking to escape the cold, but weather wreaks havoc across the system.
Even if you’re flying from Miami to Los Angeles your inbound aircraft might be coming from snowing Chicago O’Hare.
China Southern has become a stepchild within the SkyTeam alliance, with Delta taking an equity stake in China Eastern and China Eastern taking an equity stake in Air France. Moreover with Delta’s Korean Air joint venture, China Southern Guangzhou connections become less important still.
American Airlines took an equity stake in China Southern (natch) but their codesharing relationship was limited by SkyTeam rules.
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 »
