Category Archives for Airlines.
The problem airlines face is that charging for things that are included in a ticket now, or raising fees, is really just a price increase. And passengers may not be willing to pay more, some may stay home or drive.
If a price increase meant more money for the airline, airlines would raise prices.
TravelZork shares with me data on oneworld airline S7’s co-brand credit card acquisition. The most fascinating statistics center around what’s driving customers to sign up for their credit card. One data point in particular stands out: their inflight magazine is 5 times more effective than flight attendant announcements at getting customers to sign up for their card.
S7 Airlines had to discontinue their flight attendants promoting the credit card because their crews refused to do it.
American Airlines is a lot stricter with same day confirmed changes than their competitors are.
Only Platinum Pro, Executive Platinum and ConciergeKey members can same day change for free, everyone else pays $75. You have to keep the same number of stops and keep the same connecting city or cities. You can’t connect in Dallas instead of Chicago. You can’t move to a non-stop flight from a connection or vice versa. And you can only make a same day change when specific inventory is available.
Two years ago American launched a new program to e-mail non-elite flyers with offers to sell first class seats starting a week before departure. I haven’t heard much about it recently, but JonNYC says that the program is back. AA “Early upgrades” — upgrades offered via email, UP TO a week in advance (that’s when they could be offered, they clear later on), have been re-launched. Offers will be emailed to targeted/selected customers. — JonNYC (@xJonNYC) September 7, 2018 .. It states that early upgrades will only be cleared if there’s enough room to accommodate -all- forms of requested elite upgrades — JonNYC (@xJonNYC) September 7, 2018 United is known to sell first class seats cheap to non-elites. They do this while elite frequent flyers remain on the upgrade waitlist and are not given the…
Last Friday, on August 31, American Airlines flight AA663 from Phoenix to Kona lost all of its functioning lavatories. A passenger reports that “only one restroom at the front of the plane was open, but that the toilet was overflowing.” This gives new meaning to the age-old question of whether coach passengers should use the first class lavatory.
A passenger flushed a diaper down the toilet and that caused the whole system to stop functioning midway through the six and a half hour flight.
American Airlines has introduced Krug champagne to Flagship First Dining. And according to a spokesperson, “it will be in the lounges until at least March. If we receive positive responses, we’ll keep it around a bit longer.”
American Airlines announced that they now have high speed internet and live tv on 100 domestic narrowbody aircraft. The plan is to roll it out across the rest of their domestic fleet over the coming year as they add high speed satellite internet to the aircraft.
There are 111 aircraft equipped with Gogo’s 2Ku satellite internet and these planes offer free live TV. All of the airline’s Airbus A320s have the product along with “more than 60 A319s” according to internal documents. Today the product is available only on legacy US Airways aircraft and the A320s do not yet have seat power, so bring a backup battery if you want to watch something.
The percentage of American Airlines seats occupied by award customers has been lower than that of competitor airlines and had been declining ever since US Airways management took over at the airline. American was been filling about 6% of seats with awards compared to nearly 8% at United and Delta and 13% at Southwest.
AAdvantage President Bridget Blaise-Shamai reported in June that they’re “on a path towards putting our availability much more closer to the competitive levels of like a Delta or a United.”
This morning an Emirates flight was quarantined on arrival at New York JFK with sick passengers on board.
Some initial reports suggested that 100 were ill. Emirates said it was 10. The most recent information we have is that 19 passengers were deemed to have medical issues. Ten were transported to the hospital, while nine declined medical treatment and were released.
What do we know at this point? That Vanilla Ice says he was on board.
Delta’s Executive Vice President and CFO Paul Jacobson spoke this morning at the Cowen and Company Global Transportation Conference. He put up a standard Delta chart showing that customers like the airline more than their competitors, and so customers are willing to spend more to fly Delta.
Jacobson offered this startling statistic. Delta had 5000 cancellations due to maintenance in 2010 and this year there will be “fewer than 100.” He says that’s “down 99% since 2010.”
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 »
