News and notes from around the interweb:
- Could jelly beans get passengers to pay attention to safety briefings?
- At the beginning of the year Emirates was said to have ‘saved’ the Airbus A380 program with an order however that order is now in jeopardy due to engine efficiency and cost issues.
- Will American’s new reluctance to put non-elite coach passengers on other airlines matter?
The new American policy was first reported by Gary Leff on his blog, View from the Wing. In an interview, he said the ability to be transferred to another airline has always been one of the big advantages of traveling on those large carriers instead of a budget airline. This will narrow that gap, he said.
“We are going to have to wait and see what it looks like in practice. It comes down to how individual employees take this new policy,” Leff said. As for customers who need help getting to their destination on time, “You’ve got to convince someone to do it for you,” he said.
…”It may be the kind of thing that customers don’t notice until they need it,” Leff said.
- T-Pain criticized Delta’s landing music and they responded in an epic way
- Taylor Gourmet still serves sandwiches at Washington National airport despite the chain’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing. That’s because airport restaurants aren’t actually run by their brands, but are generally just licensing their names and recipes and experienced airport operators try to recreate them.
- The Spirit Airlines Mastercard has a best-ever 30,000 point signup offer of course your reward is getting to fly Spirit.
interesting list of articles i particularly enjoyed the jelly bean one, thanks for sharing
Regarding AA putting elite and other high valued members on other airlines: isn’t that a little backwards thinking of the airline? AA is taking its best customers and giving them a chance to experience what a competitor offers (during IRROPS anyways). You’re giving a chance for competitors to win that business away from you at some point with potentially better service and better reliability. You would think that AA would not want to have these members fly on anything but AA so to me that seems a bit backwards. I get they’re trying to save on expenses during IRROPS but you’ve just sent an angry, valuable customer to a competitor.
@wadachas I would imagine they are trying to be incredibly accommodating to their FF/elite members by getting them on the best possible flight option. I was very irritated when I was in Istanbul and Turkish wouldn’t put me on the next flight to the US, but only the same flight on United, the next day and I was a 1K on United and Star Alliance Gold. Perhaps I am mistaken about the purpose of doing so, but when I am traveling all I care about is getting a seat home! I appreciate an airline who does this. (side note, more recently when I was in Turkish business class from US to Istanbul and their delay caused me to miss my connection to Dushanbe they put me on a Turkish flight to Dubai and then an Emirates flight to Dushanbe, all arranged before I even left the US, so perhaps they’ve figured some things out!).