Category Archives for Airlines.
I’ve been a BankDirect customer since 2003, earning American AAdvantage miles for my checking account. These miles are a good part of how I originally earned lifetime elite status with AAdvantage over a decade ago.
BankDirect offers a 21,000 mile signup bonus.
Dave Neeleman founded JetBlue after his non-compete from Southwest’s acquisition of Morris Air where he was CEO expired. During that non-compete period he was involved in the launch of Canada’s WestJet.
A citizen of Brazil as well as the U.S. (and also now of Cyprus), Neeleman launched Brazilian carrier Azul after being forced out at JetBlue. He’s also a partner in Star Alliance carrier TAP Air Portugal.
After cancelling 675 flights Thursday and Friday, American’s wholly owned regional carrier PSA is again experiencing problems today.
On Thursday a Bravo Air MD-83 left Antalya, Turkey bound for Kiev, Ukraine. There were 169 passengers and 6 crew on board. On arrival the aircraft landed but veered off the runway before coming to a stop.
A passenger was videotaping the landing from inside the cabin. At 22 seconds you can hear clapping after touchdown, but at 37 seconds you can hear in turn to screams. It’s incredibly eerie.
Three years ago the Department of Justice announced that they were investigating the US airlines for unlawful collusion to limit capacity and increase airfares.
DOJ walking away from its case didn’t end matters. There’s still a private lawsuit. It argues that the major US airlines colluded to restrict capacity through their public statements calling for capacity discipline.
In the days following the David Dao passenger beating incident onboard a United Express plane, the airline’s CEO was chided for bicycle riding in front of his $6 million Florida mansion. Now that mansion has him in trouble in a different way.
This has gotten some coverage but since it’s an outage at regional carrier PSA — a wholly owned subsidiary that operates as American Eagle — rather than at mainline American it’s relatively undercovered considering the magnitude of travel disruption.
PSA operates over 100 Bombardier CRJ regional jets. Their largest operation centers around American’s Charlotte hub.
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.
I frequently highlight awards bookable with American AAdvantge miles in premium cabins because they tend to make fewer seats available than many other airlines on their own planes and because they have fewer partners through the oneworld alliance than United does through Star.
As a result it’s worth jumping when there are plenty of award seats available on long haul routes. That’s doubly true when you’re looking for more than two seats, because finding availability for four is exponentially harder much of the time and to many destinations.
Etihad is in the midst of re-organizing its business. The airline that launched after Gulf Air eliminated its Abu Dhabi hub by hiring away Gulf Air’s CEO adopted a strategy of buying stakes in troubled airlines around the world and redirecting their connecting traffic through Abu Dhabi. But that didn’t work out very well — the available carriers were in some cases real basket cases and not candidates for turning around with new uniforms and group purchasing agreements.
When energy prices dropped the Al Nahyan family’s appetite for absorbing losses in exchange for growing an international hub airline ran out.
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 »
