Airlines

Category Archives for Airlines.

Changes Coming to United Basic Economy Like Paid Seat Assignments and Buy Ups

by Gary Leff

airport boarding
Jan 23 2018

The point of ‘Basic Economy’ fares — which don’t let you assign seats in advance, upgrade, or make changes for a fee, and at United and American don’t allow you to bring a full-sized carry on onto the plane — is to make the travel experience so unpleasant you don’t want the fare, and will spend more to avoid the restrictions.

The risk is that customers don’t spend more with the airline offering the inferior Basic Economy product, but instead book a different airline instead (or even just decide not to travel). That’s what happened when United launched their basic economy product. They lost business. And they lost about a hundred million dollars.

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Internal Document Shows When American Airlines Will Have Fast Wifi

by Gary Leff

american airline plane
Jan 23 2018

In the middle of last year American started flying its first plane with high speed satellite internet. I lucked into flying the aircraft at the beginning of November, and internet worked though I was surprised it wasn’t faster. I know what Gogo’s 2ku service can do unthrottled and I wasn’t getting anything like those speeds.

I flew American’s inaugural 737 MAX flight at the end of November and the ViaSat satellite internet didn’t work well.

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Court Takes Airline NIKI Away from British Airways, Gives it to Race Driver Niki Lauda

by Gary Leff

Jan 23 2018

NIKI was driven into insolvency with the collapse of air berlin and withdrawl of support from Etihad. It was expected that the Austrian carrier would go to Lufthansa (specifically their low cost subsidiary Eurowings), but European competition regulators shut down that possibility.

Ultimately British Airways parent IAG was left as the lone remaining company seeking to negotiate a purchase of assets.

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For Domestic First Class Meals Quality is Better Than Quantity

by Gary Leff

Jan 22 2018

Years ago there was a story about former American Airlines CEO Bob Crandall having olives removed from first class salads, saving $40,000 a year. Small savings add up across all an airline’s flights and passengers. So carriers are often very careful about their pennies in catering.

In the spring of 2001 United replaced steak at lunch with gourmet cheeseburgers. Today’s inflight burgers on domestic airlines are much smaller and I find with lower quality meal. They keep figuring out ways to push the savings envelope farther.

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Delta Backing Off Campaign Against Gulf Carriers to Focus Mostly on Qatar

by Gary Leff

qatarplane
Jan 19 2018

Delta, American and United for three years have argued that the US government needed to take a protectionist stance against Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar. They’ve argued it’s unfair, they shouldn’t have to ‘compete against governments’ which is a rather strange position. Because if they can’t even compete against government airlines what good are they?

After failing to get what they want over the course of 3 years, Delta’s CEO in an interview appears to shift focus — arguing we shouldn’t lump the 3 Gulf airlines and that Qatar’s business model is different.

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Delta Cracking Down on Emotional Support Animals

by Gary Leff

turkey in airline cabin
Jan 19 2018

Delta announced that starting March 1 they’ll be requiring new advance documentation for passengers bringing ’emotional support animals’ on board their aircraft.

Basically they say the whole fake emotional support thing has gone too far. Delta carries 250,000 service and support animals each year — up 86% since 2016. And we’re not just talking about trained dogs, “[c]ustomers have attempted to fly with comfort turkeys, gliding possums known as sugar gliders, snakes, spiders and more.”

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American’s 2018 Schedule Includes 52 New Routes, Chicago O’Hare Becomes a Shuttle City

by Gary Leff

Jan 18 2018

American is offering “52 new nonstop flights and enhanced schedules” in its 2018 schedule Only 8 are actually newly announced today. Like United, American Airlines is beefing up service to smaller markets where there’s less competition from ultra low cost carriers like Spirit and Frontier, and consequently less fare pressure.

In addition starting April 4 Chicago – New York LaGuardia is being upgraded to a ‘shuttle’ product along the lines of New York LaGuardia – DC and Boston

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