Category Archives for Airlines.
An Air France plane skidded off the runway after landing in Toronto and caught fire around 4pm Eastern. Early reports are that most passengers are safe, but this is not yet certain. Thoughts and hopes are with the passengers and crew. Update: Everyone made it out alive, with just a few injuries.
Boldly going where another travel site has gone before, SideStep has brought on Patrick Stewart as its spokesman. In the online travel world, one of the biggest battles for new customers has come down to this: Captain Kirk vs. Captain Picard. Patrick Stewart, who played Captain Picard on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” is the new company spokesman for travel search engine SideStep. That’s a direct challenge to rival Priceline.com, whose ads have long featured William Shatner, Captain Kirk on the original “Star Trek.” (Via Tripso Daily.)
Now that American Airlines announced a profit for the second quarter, there are lots of stories trying to figure out how they did it. One piece contends that they managed to cut costs by listening to ideas from their employees. (Naturally the piece cites no evidence whatsoever that American did this any more than any other airline.) Still, there are some interesting stories about cost savings. For example,Two American Airlines mechanics didn’t like having to toss out $200 drill bits once they got dull. So they rigged up some old machine parts – a vacuum-cleaner belt and a motor from a science project – and built “Thumping Ralph.” It’s essentially a drill-bit sharpener that allows them to get more use out of each bit. The savings, according to the company: as much as $300,000 a…
bmi has introduced its buy-on-board menu and it contains this frustrating statement: Only food and drinks purchased from the cabin crew may be consumed on board. I’m not sure how or whether this will be enforced, but it’s a striking policy. US domestic carriers offering buy-on-board haven’t adopted similar policies… yet.
Airlines oppose the move to extend daylight savings time to March and November because if the rest of the world doesn’t go along the timing of their flights will be out of sync with limited landing slots in foreign airports. One estimate I’ve seen is that this will cost US airlines more than $170 million per year, though I presume the figure is somewhat self-serving and likely lower in reality. Perhaps the cost argument isn’t the only place to focus. Tyler Cowen asks whether daylight savings time is dangerous, because the moving the clock forward is equivalent to imposing a mild case of jetlag on the whole country. Some data suggests that automobile accidents go up after the change to clocks, although the data is far from conclusive (Tyler observes a lack of data on…
Last year I explained why airlines instituted ‘fuel surcharges’ instead of simply announcing ‘price increases’. One reason is that customers seem to accept price increases more readily when there’s a story that accompanies the change. Another reason is that surcharges are often permitted in negotiated corporate travel contracts that have fixed prices. The dance that accompanies surcharges leads to some absurd explanations. Northwest has announced that it will no longer ‘absorb’ passenger facility fees (which they have to pay to airports that they carry passengers cross), and as a result will be adding those fees onto tickets. Gosh, I never knew that they were kindly ‘absorbing’ a fee for me. Turns out I was getting something for nothing! Airlines have recently instituted ticketing fees for using their call centers or buying at the airport. One…
A couple of Flyertalk members met with management from Northwest Airlines and the Worldperks program and filed this report. An interesting read, though I’ll nitpick at a couple of explanations Northwest offers for decisions. In keeping with its commitment to customer loyalty, WorldPerks currently has no plans to participate in the American Express Membership Rewards program. Northwest see this as simply: “Why should someone who has no loyalty to Northwest Airlines receive miles for the points they have in another loyalty program, and redeem them for awards, thus reducing the number of awards for loyal WorldPerks members? If that’s the case, how come I can transfer points to Northwest from Diners Club, Starwood, Goldpoints, etc. etc.? And if the issue is sharing a fixed pie of award seats with folks other than Worldperks members, how…
The cover story of the July, 2005 Inside Flyer is on airlines spinning off their frequent flyer programs in public offerings. David Rowell thinks United could be worth $15 billion. Randy Petersen says “greater than $2.5 billion.” According to the piece, airlines sell $3 billion worth of miles annually. United’s spinoff of Mileage Plus into a wholely-owned subsidiary in 2002 was a $1.4 billion transaction. Mileage is clearly a big business: In 2003, ULS accounted for 5 percent of UAL’s 2003 revenues. In 2004, United recognized more than $400 million in revenues related to ULS, which would not reflect the entire business revenue of ULS for that year. In 2000, revenue for third-party mileage sales reached $220 million during the first six months alone. But American AAdvantage is clearly the king of frequent flyer programs,…
Effective yesterday, Alaska and KLM have discontinued their partnership. This was revealed on Flyertalk. I can’t find any mention of the change on the Alaska Air website, all references to the KLM partnership are just gone — down the memory hole — very Orwell-esque. Award tickets that have already been issued are valid for travel for one year from date of issue or June 6, 2006, whichever comes first. Not only was the change done without warning, but members haven’t been informed.
Air Canada successfully sold a stake in its frequent flyer program today, and based on the price paid for a 12.5% stake Aeroplan has a market value of CAD$2 billion.
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 »
