Category Archives for Airlines.
It’s been quite some time since American Airlines refreshed their buy on board offerings in coach. Today they announced a new partnership with Zoës Kitchen. New items will be available for purchase starting December 1.
South African received a bailout a year ago to help with a new CEO’s plan to stabilize the airline by convincing banks they would continue to exist. Despite government cash infusions the airline’s debts now exceed their assets.
A report to the company’s board says the airline faces “rampant corruption, low pilot productivity, a significantly weak balance sheet, liquidity problems, loss of confidence from suppliers, a lack of critical skills and fragmented IT systems.”
Singapore Airlines usually makes premium cabin awards available only to their own KrisFlyer members. You can transfer points from Chase, American Express, and Citi into the KrisFlyer program, so their miles are relatively easy to get.
If you want to fly Singapore’s business or first class on more than an intra-Asia flight you aren’t going to be able to use miles from United, Aeroplan, or other Star Alliance programs — most of the time.
Six years ago there was a brief window where Singapore Airlines awards were bookable by partners but there hasn’t been anything like it since.
Three years ago American Airlines and Qantas announced an expanded joint venture. American was launching Sydney and Auckland service, Qantas Sydney – San Francisco. And they indicated there would be more new routes in the offing as a result of the partnership.
They proposed to extend their partnership to coordinate schedules and pricing and share revenue on Pacific flights (but not Hawaii routes). The Obama administration said no.
At an employee Crew News session this past week a pilot asked American Airlines President about weight restrictions flying Hawaii back to the mainland of the U.S. using Airbus A321 aircraft. American cannot fly as many people back to the mainland as they fly from the mainland to Hawaii.
Delta has been running sale after sale on award redemptions recently. Make no mistake charging fewer miles for a ticket is better than charging more miles. But there’s been tremendous euphoria in the blogosphere about how valuable Delta SkyMiles have become. That’s just falling for Delta’s hype and doesn’t make sense at all.
American Airlines is in the process of rolling out a new “Hotel, Meal & Transportation (HMT) system” that will replace vouchers for hotels and meals during irregular operations with “a virtual credit card for hotels and meals.”
Vouchers can be emailed to customers or printed, so that vendors no longer need to return paper vouchers for payment.
Last night United’s San Francisco – Newark redeye, flight UA1796, was delayed for a much shorter period of time than you’d expect when when a bird found itself trapped and flying around inside of the airline’s Big Metal Bird.
United’s Newark-bound stowaway was captured and released. When it arrived at Newark on its own it declared, “boy are my arms tired.”
A man hopped a fence at the Melbourne, Florida airport — and got on board an American Airlines plane. This happened around 2 a.m. These incidents never end well.
The perpetrator is a 26 year old man from Trinidad “who entered the country via Canada” and is a student pilot. He wasn’t very sneaky. Maintenance workers saw him. And then tackled him.
A Delta pilot has been indicted for lying to the FAA in order to be certified to fly, claiming that he didn’t suffer depression even though he had sought help from the Department of Veterans Affairs for a “major depressive disorder.”
The pilot had claimed his VA disability benefits for covering “knee strain and tinnitus.”
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 »
