Category Archives for Airlines.
There’s a long history of sexualizing flight attendants. It remains a part of the culture in the U.S. but isn’t nearly as overt as it once was. In part that’s because travel is no longer nearly as glamorous, and airlines in the U.S. rarely promote the glamour of most of their travel experience (and when they do it now focuses on product). U.S. culture would no longer be as welcoming of this as it once was either.
American Airlines does not allow pets to be checked as cargo on their Airbus narrowbodies. They are growing this fleet with A321neos that begin delivering at the start of 2019.
Airlines are cracking down on emotional support animals. Small pets can travel in the cabin for a fee, but larger pets need to be checked. Owners of larger animals then may be caught between Scylla and Charybdis unable to bring their animal on board as an emotional support animal, unable to bring them in cabin for a fee, and unable to check them when traveling on half the domestic fleet — and many destinations are served exclusively by these aircraft.
Flight attendants may be given detail on an airline’s food. They rarely pay it much mind, and I usually get blank stares and shrugs when I ask something about a dish before I order it. So I’ve learned not to ask.
Not only did I get a description of the dishes I could choose from, I didn’t have to ask the flight attendant what the wines were. If I ask I usually get another blank stare, “red and white” or sometimes if I’m lucky they will show me the bottle.
When I first started writing about American’s 737 MAX and the miniature lavatory, the airline kept asking why don’t I give Southwest the same hard time?
A really great burger starts with quality beef. It should have processed cheese that melts well. And it should be inside of a potato bun.
Don’t give me ciabatta bread for a bun. Don’t give me a kaiser roll. As good as brioche can be, it’s not well-matched to a burger. The bun is a delivery vehicle for the burger. It needs to be big enough to contain the burger, but shouldn’t be so large that it overwhelms the burger.
Everything you put on the burger needs to fit inside of the bun. You don’t want the burger to fall apart when you eat it.
It’s still possible to get value out of the SkyMiles program and it’s worth highlighting when you’re able to get saver business class award space using those miles.
The bizarre thing is that the price of even saver space varies widely on Delta, although sometimes that rebounds to your benefit. Virgin Atlantic saver award space is cheaper than Delta saver award space, and both are available for four or more passengers in business class.
After each earnings call American Airlines hosts a ‘state of the airline’ meeting with employees. Not everyone gets to ask all of their questions live, so the airline collects additional questions and follows up with answers.
Those responses tend to be much more anodyne that the live ones given by top executives. Nonetheless they can sometimes reveal useful tidbits that either confirm things I thought I knew or tell me something I wasn’t already aware of. Here are some of the things that were shared with me and seemed worth passing on.
United Airlines President spoke at the Boyd Aviation Forecast Summit and shared that they’re planning to offer lie flat seats on new Boeing 737 MAX 10s.
United would use these planes to replace the current Boeing 757s operating domestically with lie flat seats which are deployed on routes like Newark – Los Angeles and San Francisco, and also to expand the number of domestic routes offering a premium service.
The airline has shared with employees that they “are currently collaborating with various teams to redesign the customer-facing upgrade list.” To be clear this does not sound like any change to upgrades, just to how the upgrade list appears to the customer. This change seems to focus on “which product/cabin each person is waiting for and who has been cleared.”
Earlier I wrote about American’s nine new routes to Europe, eight of which are seasonal.
American shared that they’ve be eliminating Chicago – Shanghai and reducing Chicago – Tokyo service while adding plenty of flying to Europe.
They’re also cutting plenty of other service too. In fact they are cutting more than they are adding.
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 »
