Category Archives for Airlines.
One week ago, air traffic control screwed up in San Diego, clearing two Southwest Airlines flights onto the same runway at the same time, leading to a high-speed aborted takeoff – but which could have been much worse.
American Airlines won a $9.4 million verdict against Skiplagged for copyright infringement. That’s being reported as a huge win for American, and vindication of their fight against throwaway ticketing. It is not.
American Airlines flight 2587 from Chicago O’Hare to Austin had a near-miss with a 1979 Cessna R182 that passed it with just about 400 feet of vertical separation on Wednesday.
The American Boeing 737 had been alerted to the traffic in the area, but lost it descending into fog on final approach. They responded to a traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) alert as the Cessna flew directly into their approach path, almost right below.
That play was created by Alaska’s acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines, and won’t last. I spoke with Alaska’s Vice President of Loyalty, Alliances, and Sales Brett Catlin about next year’s Mileage Plan program changes, and I took the opportunity to ask about their co-brand credit card relationship going forward, now that Alaska Airlines has acquired Hawaiian.
People queue up to board. They rush the gate. They try to board long before it’s their turn, even though they’ll be fine with overhead space usually unless they’re among the last on the plane.
Airlines made this game. They can’t do simple back-to-front boarding because they sell priority boarding, sell first class, and reward customers with status.
Over the summer the FAA launched a safety audit of Southwest Airlines. This came after the airline came within feet of the water while still miles from Tampa less than a month after another of the airline’s 737s descended to just over 500 feet while still 9 miles out from the Oklahoma City airport. In April, a Southwest Airlines flight in Hawaii came within 400 feet of the Pacific Ocean. Then in June a Southwest Airlines flight took off from a closed runway Southwest has shared internally some of the issues that FAA inspectors have flagged during the Certificate Holder Evaluation Process Safety Audit. I suppose some of these are better than the pilots who spent a flight watching video feed of passengers in the lavatory? The airline declined comment since “[t]he CHEP is still…
Alaska Airlines has announced changes – nearly all improvements – to its Mileage Plan program for 2025. I spoke with Alaska’s Vice President of Loyalty, Alliances, and Sales Brett Catlin about the effort – which he calls a “phase one.”
Delta Air Lines has announced an interior cabin refresh. They’re tying this to their 100 year anniversary, presenting a new more modern image. The palette is darker. They won’t swap out seats, just add memory foam padding to some seats. And they’re adding new lighting. Naturally this is pitched as being “premium” and a new interior, to most passengers, feels like new planes.
The Department of Transportation and Lufthansa have entered a consent order addressing the airline’s discrimination based on religion, impacting 128 Jewish passengers on May 4, 2022 who were traveling from New York JFK to Budapest via Frankfurt and who were denied boarding on their connecting flight due to the misconduct of some passengers on the first leg of the journey.
Throughout 2023, American Airlines was promising that anything you wanted to do with the airline could be done digitally – with the few remaining features to be delivered by the end of the year. I kept asking, just as a glaring example of what was missing, what about upgrades?
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 »
