Category Archives for Airlines.
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.
Inflight disturbances frequently involve alcohol. Here’s a Love & Hip Hop star being booted from a Delta flight for coming onboard glass of wine in hand last year.
UK airlines want to regulate airport sales of alcohol. Presumably restrictions on when alcohol can be served in airports would limit airline lounge costs, too.
There’s been discussion on reddit and blogs about whether Korean Air could become an American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner.
Here’s what American Express had to say.
I continue to worry that airlines really haven’t learned very much — other than to pay more involuntary denied boarding compensation — from last year’s United Airlines David Dao fiasco. Police remain adjunct airline customer service representatives for dealing with unhappy passengers.
The father of the White House Press Secretary flew American Airlines last night though, on American’s Los Angeles to Nashville redeye. On arrival though passengers weren’t allowed to enter the terminal.
As a regular Delta flyer Huckabee didn’t realize quarantine has been standard procedure for American flights whenever someone in coach bought a barbecue sandwich.
While both Etihad and Jet Airways would retain stakes in the program after a deal with Blackstone it’s not clear the relative shares each party would give up. For Etihad even a partial sale would them out of their worldwide expansion, which they’ve retrenched from after losing their shirts in Alitalia and air berlin. For Jet Airways it would provide them desperately-needed cash.
Reportedly the deal would value the program at $429 – $569 billion, which is 43% – 90% higher than in 2013. At the same time though membership in the program has grown 220% during that period so its value would be lower on a per-member basis.
Last night American Airlines started showing some award space online for Cathay Pacific, Malaysia Airlines, Qatar, and SriLankan. That’s been pulled and is no longer available.
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 »
