Category Archives for Airlines.
Delta’s outsourced Sky magazine laid off all its staff at the start of the pandemic. American, which outsourced American Way starting with US Airways management’s takeover in 2015, followed suit a year later despite The Onion once suggesting that the airline stop flying passengers to focus on its core magazine business.
And now United Airlines has followed suit axing its Hemispheres magazine from seatback pockets.
Overall I find American’s offers too complicated, but many Hyatt elites should take advantage of them anyway – for the short-term status, or longer-term since it’s easy to generate loyalty points via credit card spend and online shopping – and there’s no fee associated with the offer when it comes though the Hyatt partnership.
When Delta’s systems melted down, they lost track of crew. They were making announcements in terminals looking for pilots who could work. Their crew scheduling systems collapsed. It took days for those systems to catch up, running several instances in parallel (which caused its own problems, as those systems needed to sync). The meltdown was caused by crew scheduling system failures and that system was IBM, not Microsoft according to Satya Nadella and Microsoft’s lawyers.
The official end of the Northern Hemisphere summer this year is Sunday, September 22. Airline summer traditionally runs through Labor Day. But American Airlines has ended its summer.
Imagine how frustrating it would be as an airline customer to have your flight cancelled, get sent to a hotel for the night, and face a long line to get to your room – only to see your airline’s staff march right past you with priority.
United has been promoting ‘epic’ deals on award travel this week, with a different mystery destination each day – and sale prices available that day only.
Delta Air Lines cancelled more flights last month than they did in 2018 and 2019, in an historic meltdown following the CrowdStrike outage. They delayed taking care of customers, denied blame, and their CEO jetted off to Paris for the Olympics.
They’ve made a big show of their plan to sue CrowdStrike for damages, since this wasn’t Delta’s fault, but they have several hurdles to overcome.
Two flights in a row an American Airlines passenger found that overhead bins were virtually empty yet people were being required to gate check their carry-on bags. They weren’t allowed to bring their bags onto the plane, even though there was plenty of space.
This is one of the most frequent complaints about airlines I see in social media, day after day, alongside damaged checked bags. Those two complaints are related! Who wants to waste time at baggage claim when they land, only to find their bags lost or damaged?
Since current US Airways management took over, standby policies have been broken. They’ve been more focused on making sure customers don’t get a good deal with standby, potentially saving money, than on making sure customers get where they’re going. And they’re far less generous than Delta and United here.
Reader Doug asks why there’s no Coca-Cola in the Turkish Airlines business class or Miles & Smiles lounges in Istanbul? And some of you may not be aware of the reason either: it’s a political statement.
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 »
