Category Archives for Airlines.
United Airlines President Scott Kirby told a JP Morgan Chase conference yesterday that it’s considering premium economy for domestic flights. He didn’t provide any details on what that would mean, but it seems clear enough to anyone paying attention.
Watch as passengers look on in amazement as a spinner bag rolls on its own, away from aircraft and down the alleyway between American Airlines and Delta operations.
Hint: the white woman on the plane who was tricked into putting her feet down and behaving like something more of a human being isn’t actually getting $1000 from United for doing so. That’s not racism, that’s just gullibility trumping passenger shaming.
And this, Department of Homeland Security, is why you don’t require passengers to check electronics with lithium ion batteries as baggage. If they hadn’t caught this prior to departure they could have had a much more serious situation on their hands.
Yesterday morning a United gate agent in Atlanta ‘sounds like a coach’ giving a pregame speech commends his team passengers for making it to the plane on time. “You’re here, you’re on time. I’m commending you for it. I’m high-fiving you for it,” he says.
But he warns everyone, they may be tempted to go get breakfast at the nearby bagel place. “Goldberg’s have lethargic lines,” he says. “They don’t move as quick as they should this time of the morning.”
Air Peace is a 5 year old carrier based in Lagos, Nigeria. They’ve only been flying internationally for a year (their first service beyond Nigeria was to Accra, Ghana). They fly mostly Boeing 737s.
Their call sign is ‘Peace Bird’ and their two letter IATA designator is ‘P4’. So on that basis alone I’m rooting for them.
At the end of 2015 Air France KLM’s Flying Blue program said they were working on changes that would make them more like Delta SkyMiles in order to preserve “the program’s economic balance.” That’s never what customers want to hear.
Flying Blue matters to you because they’re a transfer partner of Chase, American Express, and Citibank. And because Air France availability is much better using Flying Blue miles than with points from partners.
American Airlines began the race to charge checked bag fees. First it was a second checked bag fee, then fee for the first. It became industry standard with Southwest remaining as the outlier.
With passengers charged for overhead bin space they began carrying more onto the plane. With planes largely full for the past several years there hasn’t been enough bin space to accommodate everyone, leaving the last passengers to board having to gate check their bags usually meaning that they must collect those bags at baggage claim.
On flights where some passengers have to gate check bags it won’t be those who pay extra to board early and queue up in group two. It will be those who don’t pay the $9.
American is investing in the domestic fleet, adding seat power and bigger overhead bins and high speed internet even as they’re cramming in more seats. AAdvantage has been devalued, but so have most of their competitor frequent flyer programs. There are a lot of things that the airline really has going for itself. There are fantastic assets and improvements that shouldn’t be overlooked, and should even be celebrated.
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 »
