Category Archives for Commentary.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
In this crazy video two employees are fighting. We don’t know when the video was taken, although it was posted to Facebook yesterday. It’s happening in the Caribbean — I think St. Croix, though I haven’t been since a US Airways mistake fare brought me in 2007 — and one of the employees is wearing an American Airlines vest.
We can only speculate what started the fight — but usually it’s passengers that are melting down. Right now though flight attendants (who are just entering contract negotiations) and mechanics (who haven’t yet gotten a new contract from the merged airline) seem to hate American. That apparently leaves other employees and contractors to hate each other.
T-Mobile and Sprint executives didn’t stay much at the Trump Hotel in DC before they announced the merger but as soon as the deal was announced their spending ramped up to 14% of their total DC hotel spend.
Qatar Airways CEO Akbar al-Baker promised a “revolutionary” economy seat. And that would be hard to do for an airline whose CEO has already claimed in the past that they don’t need to offer premium economy — because their economy product is already premium economy.
At the JP Morgan Aviation, Transportation, & Industrials Conference today JP Morgan’s Jamie Baker asked American Airlines CEO Doug Parker about the airline’s poor revenue performance compared to United and Delta.
He noted that Parker had promised that the airline’s new aircraft would help the carrier’s bottom line. In general newer aircraft are more fuel efficient and have lower maintenance costs, that’s good on the cost side, but these new planes were supposed to be more attractive to customers as well.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Star Alliance member and United Airlines partner South African Airways is promising to check the licenses of all of its pilots — and obtain copies from a government regulator instead of pilots just bringing in copies themselves — after discovering that one of their veteran long haul pilots had been using a forged license for 25 years.
The passenger sharing the experience asked a flight attendant for help, but there were no empty seats on the flight. At this point the larger passenger is embarrassed, apologizing that he can’t just take a later flight. And the flight attendant “tells him that unless someone on the flight agrees to let him take up part of their seat, he’ll need to book another flight.”
That’s when our anti-hero proposes a Coasian bargain.
Here’s what I think if the most challenging thing with each of the largest airlines and hotel chains, a simple statement influenced by my idiosyncratic preferences — but I think they stand up:
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 »
