Category Archives for Airlines.
A couple of months ago I laid out an argument that American Airlines wouldn’t fly to India or Dubai.
Now American Airlines executives laid out in an employee forum why they aren’t planning to fly to India.
American American was instrumental in the launch of one of the Douglas DC-3 in the 1930’s. And now it’s possible to eat food prepared in one. American’s Chairman C.R. Smith badgered and cajoled Donald Douglas into developing a stretched successor to the DC-2.
One of the things about new routes is that they often have award space available when schedules first load.
And that’s true in this case. Space for four business class passengers is wide open.
Just a few days ago I wrote about the steps that were necessary in order to book Cathay Pacific business class awards since they weren’t appearing available at all to partner airlines like American or Alaska.
There’s good news now, though.
United Airlines held its earnings call this morning. The airline’s stock price jumped with release of their performance for the second quarter and during the call.
Since earnings beat estimates it was a more upbeat call than many of United’s recent run-ins with the investor community. It also largely focused on how they plan to drive earnings growth despite potential geopolitical and fuel price challenges.
VietJet’s CEO became Southeast Asia’s first self-made female billionaire. The airline is a discount carrier flying narrowbody aircraft mostly domestically although with several routes now into Asia.
They’ve branded themselves the bikini airline. And the airline’s CEO sees the campaigns and onboard stunts as empowering. Vietnam has a very conservative culture, and the public bikini stunts rebel against traditional notions of female dress in that society.
At the beginning of the year we learned that American Airlines rolled out a new software program called iSolve to let flight attendants compensate passengers for onboard inconveniences like “inflight entertainment issues, broken seats or meal shortages.”
Four Delta agents in Seattle were fired and were told it’s because they were giving out upgrades.
When flights are oversold in coach but have empty seats in business class, airlines pick out passengers to give ‘operational upgrades’ to. Some airlines will ;prioritize this based on elite status, but that’s not always the case.
Kimber Bermudez is a first grade teacher based in Chicago. She’s been teaching for just two years. Last Tuesday she flew Southwest Airlines to Florida to visit her parents. She was in seat 14C Her seat opponent struck up a conversation with her, asking what she did for a living.
Passengers around her were listening.
This is going to be a fairly technical post but I’ll do my best to explain it simply. There have been plenty of reader concerns the last few weeks that Cathay Pacific no longer offers business class award space to American AAdvantage or Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan members. It turns out there’s just a trick to find and book the space.
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 »
