Category Archives for Airlines.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
The symbol of Southwest Airlines is a heart. This has been a theme of the airline’s since the beginning. They launched at Dallas Love field. Their flight attendants wore pink hot pants (designed by founding airline President Lamar Muse’s first wife). Automated ticket machines were called “Quickies.” Peanuts at Southwest were once known as ‘Love Bites.’ Their New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol remains LUV.
On Sunday, though, it took on a whole new meaning because one of their planes had to turn around because a human heart was left on board.
There’s a change in policy coming to short United effective January 1. Instead of trying to offer a full drink service to economy passengers, flights attendants will pre-pour a selection of beverages and place those onto a “pick up pan” for customers.
It’s a quicker drink service that is easier to complete and also means less choice for customers. Flight attendants will choose what to pour, though they’re encouraged to offer coffee on morning flights.
Yesterday United Airlines made a big announcement of new flying from San Francisco. Today American Airlines is out with their own announcement of new flying as well.
American is expected to grow at both Dallas Fort-Worth (in 2019 with new gates coming online) and Charlotte (in 2020 with new gates coming online) and at Washington National (by operating larger regional jets at the dreaded gate 35X is replaced with a new regional concourse). The airline says these are their most profitable hubs.
American Airlines will let you buy back your status if you aren’t going to requalify. On the one hand it’s expensive. On the other if you were going to mileage run to reach the status level, this saves you time.
American may realize their prices are too high, or at least that they have plenty of time to market to members in different ways. If a member doesn’t buy, why not put elite status on a clearance sale?
United has announced a significant increase in international flying from San Francisco. Since CEO Oscar Munoz was talking to press, and it was being touted as ‘historic’, speculation abounded.
Several new routes and additional flights have been announced — but not even a single new destination for United.
American Airlines hosts a ‘state of the airline’ event for employees after its earnings calls. There senior management shares their vision for the company and employees can ask questions. In addition to those questions that are asked live, there are followup questions that get asked – and answered – in writing.
The airline has shared written responses to several employee questions, and some of those contained information I did not know (although in some cases may have assumed).
Where do they want to fly bigger planes? Will they be updating business class seats on certain aircraft? How far along are they installing satellite wifi?
Back in June I wrote about the class action settlement over fuel surcharges imposed by British Airways on U.S. customers between November 9, 2006 and April 17, 2013.
Sadly British Airways stopped calling these member taxes ‘fuel surcharges’ (which legally have to be related to the cost of fuel) and started calling them ‘surcharges’ (money for nothing) and they can keep on penalizing Avios redemptions to their heart’s content.
Supermodel Chrissy Teigen is a total frequent flyer geek.
Last year she even broke news about a flight turning back around to LAX due to a security issue when she and her husband John Legend were enroute to Tokyo. She’s even brunched with Chase Sapphire cardholders.
A little over a year ago American Airlines started offering more coach award space, and they did it in an interesting way. They started opening up award space on a married-segment basis — availability wasn’t for a specific flight but for an entire itinerary.
Agents are now being reprimanded for helping customers to work around these restrictions. And married segments make it very difficult to make changes to an award later, a real blow to Executive Platinums and ConciergeKey members who have free changes as a program benefit.
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 »
