Category Archives for Airlines.
Worldwide there’s a significant pilot shortage in commercial aviation. However at Etihad, where the airline has been scaling back from an expansive growth posture, they believe they have too many pilots.
According to an internal memo Etihad will be laying off some of their excess pilots this month.
It’s been a year since Air France started service under the ‘Joon’ brand. A separate airline with lower labor costs is one thing – and Joon had lower flight attendant costs, but not lower pilot costs. It’s hard enough to pull that off without really being a separate company. Just ask United, Delta, US Airways, and Continental about the airline within an airline experiment.
Pretending that the Air France low cost carrier without low costs was really a different brand for millennials was just silly. It was created by consultants who think millennial means “no money, doesn’t care about comfort, and is into marketing buzz.”
Air Canada, along with Aeroplan’s banking partners CIBC, TD, and Visa, completed their 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.
When American ended Chicago – China service they freed up Boeing 787 aircraft and seemingly didn’t know what to do with them. They’re flying 787s now to Cancun and Anchorage.
Then they freed up even more 787-8 flying time. Since they removed business class seats from 787-8 aircraft, with the new configuration featuring only 20 seats up front, the plane no longer works for premium markets.
Delta calls moving from regular coach to extra legroom coach (“Comfort+”) seats an ‘upgrade’ the way other airlines call coach to business an upgrade.
When you buy a ticket you don’t just assign yourself an extra legroom seat, your upgrade ‘clears’ into the extra legroom section of the plane. This process is going to create a problem on several routes beginning in March.
I’ve written before about how Delta award sales don’t drive much value to the program.
Pulling up award calendars on Delta it’s indeed possible to find 44,000 mile roundtrip. What’s striking to me is how much extra legroom coach is pricing for the same flights (164,000) and how much business class costs. Imagine, 930,000 miles for business class. This isn’t even first class – and you’d better hurry, there’s only 1 seat left at this price.
On New Year’s Day Delta CEO sent a message to his airline’s employees laying out the company’s goals for the year. While Delta doesn’t have the simple mission the way that Southwest does they have clear goals and metrics to know whether they’re reaching those goals or not.
And it seems useful sharing what the airline is telling its employees what the company is doing, and the priorities those employees should have as they go about their year.
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.
For a long time American AAdvantage has offered status ‘challenges’ that do not require you to already have status with another airline and that you pay for. These allow you to earn elite status more quickly with travel over a compressed period of time.
American started requiring minimum spend as part of these challenges, and is expected to increase the spend required — so if you’re interested in a status challenge you may want to request it sooner than later.
Alitalia is in the midst of restructuring, since Etihad pulled the plug and stopped subsidizing the Italian flag carrier. Before Etihad pumped money in, Air France lost their shirt on the carrier.
Two months ago it was reported that Delta had submitted a binding offer to invest in the Italian airline.
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 »
