Category Archives for Airlines.
They say any flight you walk away from is a good flight. But out of flights that all passengers walked away from this one may have been the worst: Air France stranded 282 passengers for three days. In Siberia. Oh, and they had no Russian visas so required constant police monitoring.
Last Thursday a Ryanair Boeing 737 was preparing to depart Bordeaux, France for London Stansted airport when French authorities stopped the aircraft, prevents passengers from boarding, and seized the jet.
France offered the subsidies illegal. Ryanair complied with its obligations. And France gets its money back?
Delta announced restrictions on accessing their airport lounges, limiting use to passengers flying the airline or one of its partners same day. Club members could no longer use their club unless also paying Delta or its partners additional money to travel.
So American announced that same restriction. And a couple of weeks later, surprising no one in the known universe, United followed. American also announced an increase in club prices.
Winter is a rough time for the US travel industry all around. Business travel dries up and hotel occupancy falls. That’s not good for airlines either. Leisure travel is heavy around the holidays, and among passengers looking to escape the cold, but weather wreaks havoc across the system.
Even if you’re flying from Miami to Los Angeles your inbound aircraft might be coming from snowing Chicago O’Hare.
China Southern has become a stepchild within the SkyTeam alliance, with Delta taking an equity stake in China Eastern and China Eastern taking an equity stake in Air France. Moreover with Delta’s Korean Air joint venture, China Southern Guangzhou connections become less important still.
American Airlines took an equity stake in China Southern (natch) but their codesharing relationship was limited by SkyTeam rules.
I’ve previously suggested that frequent flyer executives have their compensation paid out in airline miles. Then their incentives would be aligned with their customers to support the value of the currency.
Do you think airline employees would accept their pay in travel vouchers? If not then why should investors?
On Monday Spanish language El Pais reported that British Airways parent company IAG was in talks with that country’s government about ensuring the airline conglomerate would be a European – rather than UK – company once Britain leaves the EU, if no bilateral aviation deal is done in time.
American Airlines is rolling out new menus for domestic first class lunches and dinners this week, and will be flying starting Wednesday. New breakfasts follow next year.
Here’s what’s for lunch and dinner starting tomorrow — we can expect these meals, designed by chef Julian Barsotti, to be standard fare for the next year. That should give me plenty of time to try the new lunch cheeseburger.
Two weeks ago American AAdvantage launched award ‘web specials’.
American has loaded several routes into web specials. This includes longer haul travel, and even includes Hawaii, at a variety of discounted prices.
Government-owned Air India is a basket case. Air India crew often do as they wish whether it’s evading alcohol checks and refusing to fly unless they’re paired with their preferred co-workers.
There’s certainly fertile ground for improvement as the airline wishes to regain control of its operation. One place they may want to start is with whom they put in charge of training pilots for safety.
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 »
