Category Archives for General.
This week’s Airline Weekly (subscription only) interviews Delta CEO Ed Bastian. Delta doesn’t order new Boeing aircraft, but argues that foreign competition is bad for US jobs.
Despite a path towards declaring victory and going home in their fight against Gulf airline rivals, Bastian pushes back on criticisms over Delta’s purchase of subsidized Bombardier C-series jets by calling out Boeing for their willingness to sell planes to the Gulf carriers.
While a government shut down doesn’t interfere with air traffic control and TSA’s front line screeners — both considered essential — that the FAA’s registration office closes and that could delay new aircraft deliveries.
That would delay American Airlines taking delivery of more Boeing 737 MAX aircraft with just 30 inches between seats, no seat back video, and shrunken lavatories that let the airline squeeze in an extra row of seats.
This week was the anniversary of the US Airways 1549 ‘Miracle on the Hudson’. When imagining a plane full of passengers bracing for impact it’s hard not to think about the scene inside that plane from Sully whose dramatization of that flight made the entire movie.
Yesterday an American Airlines flight from Phoenix to Dallas Fort-Worth operated by a Mesa CRJ-900 made an emergency landing and video from inside the cabin of passengers being told to brace and preparing to evacuate is incredible.
Star Alliance member EVA Air is out with a new safety video that they say took three months of planning and rehearsing — and which they view as art (“EVA Makes Inflight Safety a Work of Art”).
American has a new play in Chinese distribution. China’s Alibaba Group has an online travel service called Fliggy. American Airlines is launching an online travel store on Fliggy, and extending elite benefits to Fliggy’s elite customers.
Yesterday’s United Airlines Chicago – Hong Kong flight UA895 had to divert to Anchorage because a passenger kept “smearing feces everywhere” according to airport police.
He also took off his shirt and tried to stuff it in the toilet.
Last month Singapore Airlines announced new fare types going into effect January 20.
‘Economy lite’ fares — Singapore’s Basic Economy fare buckets Q, N, V, and K — aren’t just going to mean paid advance seat selection. While this wasn’t announced at the time, Singapore will also be imposing a 1.3% credit card surcharge to Economy Lite reservations originating in Singapore.
Southwest is giving every employee $1000, giving an additional $5 million to charity and exercising options for 40 Boeing 737 MAX 8 (“15 firm orders in 2019 and 25 firm orders in 2020”). They’re crediting the tax reform bill for the moves.
American Airlines is also giving each employee $1000. It’ll cost American Airlines about $130 million or almost twice what it will cost Southwest because of American’s size. American also credits the tax reform bill.
American Airlines is done painting planes — updating the old bare metal legacy American Airlines livery, and repainting US Airways planes to say American. MD80s, slated for retirement, haven’t been painted.
The livery was hugely controversial, many customers, critics and employees didn’t like it. With the merger they’d be repainting even more planes, adding 299 legacy US Airways aircraft to the project. At the time it was an open question whether they’d keep the new livery that American rolled out before the merger.
As you’re collecting points it’s easy to build up balances in several programs — substantial amounts of points, but maybe not enough for two or four people to fly roundtrip in business class to the other side of the world.
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 »
