Category Archives for Airlines.
Along with American’s decision to order new Boeing 787s to replacing aging 767s, 777-200s, and A330s, they’ve deferred delivery of 40 out of the 100 Boeing 737 MAXs they’ve ordered. These now aren’t scheduled to be delivered until 2025 – 2026.
One employee commented on American’s internal message board that “Maybe AA is really listening to the customers and decided the MAX isn’t all too popular!” Unfortunately that’s not how this will work.
Qatar Airways CEO Akbar al Baker loves to ‘rub salt in the wounds’ and said that’s why he launched Doha – Atlanta. The airline loves to pick up awards, and so does the man himself. So it’s a double win for them to be Atlanta airport’s cargo airline of the year. There’s little question though that Qatar Airways is a tool of Qatar diplomacy. That’s why they struck a deal go give up nothing while settling complaints from United, Delta and American that they’re subsidized. It not only puts the issue behind them at little cost it put the UAE’s Emirates and Etihad in an awkward spot. Qatar agreed not to operate fifth freedom flights to the U.S., something they have zero interest in doing. Meanwhile Emirates does already operate fifth freedom flights. Their agreement…
I’ve been a critic of American Airlines domestic first class meals, though I’ve had multiple people tell me that the current chicken meatballs aren’t bad and the short rib is better than some of the other choices.
American Airlines lets you pre-select your meal up to 24 hours prior to departure. That’s not like Singapore Airlines where you get a wide variety of choices. Instead you’re mostly just choosing from among the options that would be available onboard. But…
There has been a lot of buzz about a Washington Post piece suggesting that high risk dogs are the ‘real reason’ more dogs die onboard United. But that is a substantial overclaim of what is actually in the data.
Understanding which breeds constitute the greatest risk is a good first step in reviewing the pet shipping program. 18 of the 24 cargo pet deaths in 2017 were on United, while United carried about one third of pets. Drilling down into what’s going on with different types of animals may help to identify some of the problems, but it isn’t the entire story and doesn’t begin to excuse United’s poor performance in this area. And it doesn’t speak to the instances of lost/mis-routed dogs either.
British Airways has destroyed their brand with their cuts. They offered free tap water but even hot water for tea was charged. On. British. Airways. So you had to pay even if you brought your own tea bags.
Indian airline Spicejet is defending its decision to strip search flight attendants whom they believed were stealing money from inflight sales.
Flight attendants were forced to get naked and no – no money was found.
American West was the first airline to do tray table advertising (in December 2003), a practice that moved over to US Airways on some aircraft. US Airways even experimented with ads on first class tray tables.
AirTran actually launched ads on the backs of the tray tables (at US Airways you actually had to put the tray table down in order to see the ad). United experimented with tray table ads as well.
Aeroplan, the frequent flyer program that will remain associated with Air Canada until 2020, is apologizing for a survey sent out to members. They promise to delete “all data collected” from it as well.
Perhaps because of how much BA awards cost they’re also usually pretty available. And they have released space pretty reliably when the flight schedule opens.
However first class awards between North America and London seem to disappear completely in 2019.
On a Thursday Minneapolis – San Jose flight on Delta two passengers became sick and threw up. And that caused five other passengers around them to throw up, too. Passengers reported the flight was so bumpy it felt like a boat.
That was just the start.
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 »
