Category Archives for Airlines.
Airlines use up to four digits for flight numbers. That means they can have up to 9,999 flights (since there’s no flight zero), and no one comes close. American Airlines operates around 6,700 daily flights including its American Eagle regional services. So they should have plenty of room to grow!
Except they don’t. American Airlines, Delta, and United are running out of flight numbers, and nobody knows what to do about it.
Delta is giving employees two positive space passes for anywhere that Delta flies. Employees usually travel nonrevenue, space available for leisure. This lets them book confirmed travel. It’s costly to Delta, because it might displace a paying customer.
United Airlines offers less value on a basic economy ticket than competitors do. They don’t allow basic economy passengers to bring a regular carry-on bag on, and they haven’t allowed basic economy passengers to check in online, wasting passengers’ time. Fortunately they’re relaxing the online check-in rule but they’re doing it in a strange and troubling way.
Most people don’t realize that basic economy restrictions aren’t the same across airlines and that United Airlines offers much worse value than competitors.
On Tuesday a Southwest Airlines passenger was queuing to board. He and his wife had two of the very best boarding positions – A2 and A3. The person with A4 became hostile.
United Airlines was overbooked by 14 passengers on a flight to Las Vegas. They hadn’t even sold more tickets than seats.
The Biden administration is initiating a rulemaking to require that airlines seat families with children age 13 and under together for free. Generally speaking they already do, under pressure earlier in the administration. In fact, DOT has a dashboard showing this and since it’s part of airline customer service plans it’s enforceable.
Word broke yesterday that United Airlines was putting bigger regional jets – Embraer 175s – on its Aspen routes. This was surprising since the airport doesn’t support these planes, and has blocked attempts to require that they make very modest changes in order to do so. How did United make this happen?
Southwest hasn’t been a low fare airline in a long time and they are no longer a low cost airline. New federal rules will make Southwest look cheaper at the same price. That’s an underrated ace in the airline’s hole and a reason they’ll want their fares to show wherever people search for airfare. There’s no more need to hide the comparison, when people see only price.
One reasonable strategy is to just lean into discounted first class buy up offers. Pay for coach, even if you want first. Then wait for an upgrade offer. If you don’t get one, cancel the ticket and as long as you didn’t buy a basic economy fare just use the flight credit to buy the first class seat you wanted. But you’ll often wind up sitting up front for much less.
JetBlue has been trying to retool its business, which has underperformed for 15 years but finally cost its Chief Executive his job. Now they’ve been looking for revenue anywhere they can find it (such as continuing to lead the industry in checked bag fee increases) while dropping unprofitable routes out of places like Los Angeles and scaling back loss-making adventures in Europe.
The big reveal was that they will be reducing plans to buy planes, deferring orders past 2030. And without new A321XLRs coming this decade that means a lot less Europe ahead than in earlier plans and a longer way to a fleet refresh.
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 »
