Category Archives for Airlines.
Unless there’s another extension, we’ll learn today whether the Department of Justice signs off on an Alaska Airlines – Hawaiian Airlines merger, or files suit against it. The parties have been negotiating feverishly over conditions that Alaska would agree to in order to avoid government opposition. And there’s some suggestion now about what concessions may be demanded.
At the end of the day overhead bin space is first-come, first-served. The polite thing to do is to place your personal item under the seat in front of you. Flight attendants often announce this instruction. But there’s often little enforcement – and taking matters into your own hands often won’t end well.
United is really good about providing on board and in-airport milestone recognition. They’re trying to be better about saying thanks on board as well, even if it’s just words of encouragement for staff making that happen.
I find that things go wrong with my travel quite often. Airlines fail to ticket reservations. I get put on standby for an earlier flight with the wrong priority. Requests I make don’t get entered. Seat assignments disappear. Names get misspelled on tickets even when I have reservations agents spell them back to me.
These things go wrong and I’m supposed to know what I’m doing. So sometimes I wonder how the average traveler manages to get from one place to another at all. Maybe they don’t?
Pilots have been seeing record wages in new deals at the major carriers, in the face of paying too many to retire at the depths of Covid while not adding more to the pipeline, a recovery in air travel, and the time and cost to introduce new pilots as a result of government regulation lobbied for by the big pilot union ALPA. The tide may be about to turn.
Equally frustrating to late departures – or maybe even more problematic – is departing early. It’s the Goldie Locks problem. You plan on the basis of the airline’s schedule, and departing early means you have less time than you though to make it to the airport and through security. You may miss your flight!
Customers have started reporting that they’re seeing blankets and pillows back in domestic first class on American Airlines. That’s on cross country redeye flights.
The space underneath the seat in front of you usually belongs to you. Not every passenger respects this. Your seat opponent may use the space in front of them and the space in front of you. When you arrive at your seat, there’s already a bag sitting where your feet should go.
They might even put their stuff in front of your seat and not in front of theirs to give themselves the extra legroom.
With American Airlines and Southwest appearing to lose at the FAA and TSA in their efforts to shut down fellow Dallas-based competitor JSX, which offers a better passenger experience, they’ve turned to their friends in Congress to do the dirty.
It’s the right stupid game for this stupid timeline we live in. Rawdog Simulator.
This summer ‘raw dogging’ has been the rage, because someone decided that it means sitting on a plane staring into space with nothing to do – nothing to read, no inflight entertainment – and the phrase itself sounds vaguely transgressive.
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 »
