Category Archives for Airlines.
For months I’ve been writing that American was considering a major pullback of their Asia routes from Chicago.
They just announced they’re dropping Shanghai and reducing Tokyo to 3 times weekly, while added 9 European routes — 8 seasonal — with nothing for New York.
One month into writing this blog, back in June 2002, I explained how you could fly Concorde for $1258.95 by earning miles for magazine purchases. Your cost would be even lower, of course, if you donated the magazines to a non-profit and took a tax deduction.
That deal is long gone, but you can still buy magazines, earn lots of miles, and even potentially donate them for a tax deduction (provided it still makes sense for you to itemize under last year’s tax reform).
Assuming the transaction closes Aeroplan members will still have an Air Canada relationship in two years, and access to Star Alliance in two years. And this gives Canadian members more of the certainty they’re looking for.
What I don’t like in this document is that it suggests customers will be reassured their existing itineraries will still be honored if they actually ask. I can certainly see the ‘87% of passengers’ American says fly at most once a year not understanding this and not explicitly asking, agreeing to be moved to a less desirable itinerary thinking they have no choice.
Effective September 1 the New York JFK lounge will have 35% more space because they’re converting the attached B concourse Admirals club to become part of the Flagship lounge. This adds 7000 square feet to the existing 19,541 square foot Flagship lounge footprint.
That means the only Admirals Club at JFK will be the C concourse lounge. However most domestic flights — which is what most Admirals Club passengers are flying — depart out of the satellite C concourse and as a result the B club which was renovated last summer doesn’t ever seem busy.
At American Airlines nothing is more important than ‘D0’ it often seems as if American would be happy if they could eliminate customers from the equation and just run their operation they’d be happy.
D0 means flights departing exactly on-time. And they’re willing to sacrifice most everything else for that goal. Gate agents can skip processing upgrades. Flight attendants get called in if they delay a flight for catering to bring servingware for international first class.
While American Airlines prepares to remove seat back video screens from their domestic fleet, Delta has added the screens now to 600 planes.
According to Delta’s Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Tim Mapes, “We continue to invest in seat-back screens, because customers continue to tell us they’re important.”
Which one is right?
We’re just over a month away from when American Airlines will cut over to a single flight attendant scheduling system. They’ll no longer have to keep former US Airways crews separate from legacy American crews. And this will allow the airline to schedule their planes more efficiently — driven more by passenger demand than contractual obligations to different flight attendant groups.
At the same time they’re imposing a new discipline system on flight attendants to ensure they show up for work.
Southwest Airlines is apparently going to vary the price of Early Bird check-in by route instead of charging a flat $15. Some routes will go up to $25 starting August 29th, and this will be based on two things: the length of the route (so how much getting a more desirable seat is likely to matter to you) and demand for Early Bird Check-in on the route (how many people are already buying it).
This isn’t as big a deal as it seems, especially if you know how to play Southwest Airlines boarding strategically.
There is something to standing behind the fares that you offer. There’s something to treating consumers at least on equal footing with large corporations. That’s not how airlines usually behave and when they do they deserve admiration and respect. Today that’s Hong Kong Airlines.
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 »
