Category Archives for Airlines.
When a Delta Air Lines flight from San Francisco to Minneapolis was delayed 14 hours, one passenger was left alone as the only customer still trying to travel. Every other customer had been rebooked instead of waiting. So this flyer had the plane all to themselves – like a Delta private jet.
Thanks to leaks from aviation watchdog JonNYC, we’re getting a pretty complete picture of Delta’s plans to totally revamp its onboard business class product next year.
Two flight attendants were removed from Delta’s flight 49 from Amsterdam to New York JFK on Friday after failing a random breathalyzer test. Since the airline normally operates the flight with more than the legal minimum required complement of cabin crew, they opted to fly as normal while offering more limited service.
Delta Air Lines is preparing to revamp their entire approach to business class. That means ‘choose your own adventure’ good, better, and best fare types as well as new bedding, meals and amenities – and a round of training for flight attendants to provide a more elevated service. This is all prompted by plunging net promoter scores for Delta One compared to pre-pandemic levels.
When computers handle the upgrades, there’s less opportunity for discretion, and as long as everyone is classified correctly on the list. But there are still plenty of cases where gate agents don’t follow the upgrade list.
She managed to get through security without a boarding pass (so TSA botched things first) and then boarded the aircraft without showing credentials to do so either. The flight was completely sold out, so no seats were available to her, but she reportedly hid in a lavatory for takeoff but eventually drew suspicion because she would leave “one lavatory and then just going into a different one…staying inside for a long time.”
The American Airlines retrofit plan of its Boeing 777-300ERs is called Project Olympus. These Boeing 777-300ERs are getting a lot more seats – and a lot more premium seats – 84 to 114 total premium seats, without losing any coach seats. In order to do this, it means that current seats have to be squeezed and so do lavatories.
Southwest Airlines will require cabins to be prepared for landing earlier in order to protect cabin crew from injuries at the end of each flight. Starting December 4, flight attendants will have to be seated earlier – so they’ll require passengers to prepare for landing when a flight descends to 18,000 feet instead of waiting until 10,000 feet.
Delta, United, American, Spirit and Frontier together generated $12.4 billion between 2018 and 2023 in seat fees alone and that this can be more than checked bag fees – citing United earning $1.3 billion in seat fees vs. $1.2 billion in bag fees last year. The total number is artificially low – fees were down during the pandemic when travel was off.
British Airways has unveiled its new first class seat for the Airbus A380, to debut in ‘early’ 2026. The seat is based off of the Collins Aerospace RTX.
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 »
