Category Archives for Airlines.
Austin has had one of the fastest growing airports on the country, year-after-year for many years. American Airlines planted a flag, growing tremendously there, though Southwest Airlines remained the largest carrier in the market by a wide margin.
Now American has pulled back almost completely, retrenching to hub flights and limited Mexico leisure service.
I don’t like lining up to board on Southwest Airlines because I don’t really want to board 30 minutes prior to departure, and stand at the gate even earlier than that. But I do like Southwest’s first-come, first-served style of seating. Southwest says I’m in the small minority on this, but hear me out. I’m really going to miss the Southwest Airlines boarding process when they move to assigned seats.
American Airlines is about to take the last standard domestic planes that still have seat back video screens, and rip those out.
Airlines may give you a free room when you’re faced with a controllable overnight delay. But you get what you pay for – you probably don’t want to sleep in the room they’re going to give you. There are exceptions, but it can be very much worth venturing off on your own rather than rolling the dice on free.
It will take time for United’s fleet to see the new fast, free inflight internet. 1,000 aircraft is a lot to deploy, even taking just a single overnight per airframe to install (and not wanting to limit schedules in the meantime taking planes out of service). But it’s a future we can now look forward to.
The agreement provides 18% – 20% raises right away, full retro pay, plus boarding pay which the union says averages to an 8.5% raise. Taken together this outpaces what inflation has eroded from flight attendant wages over the last 5 years.
Austin is a tricky market with very little long haul flying. It’s been one of the fastest growing airports in the United States, year after year and for years. But air service has grown even faster than demand.
Point.me, the service that helps you find frequent flyer award seats (and walks you through the process of setting up accounts, transferring points, and making the booking) has a lot of award search data. People are looking for available awards all day, every day.
They already know which programs offer availability the most that their members are looking for, and which programs offer those seats at the best prices.
Gate agents came onto the plane and saw the car seat – being used – and they “lost their temper, screaming at the mother and the flight attendants.” They had already told the woman it had to be gate checked. Their authority wasn’t going to be undermined.
A year ago Delta Air Lines announced severe changes to its SkyMiles elite program and for access to its Sky Clubs. Employees are talking about bringing back planned changes.
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 »
