News and notes from around the interweb:
- Delta is promoting that they attracted 1 million new customers for their co-brand American Express card this year. That doesn’t mean their cardmember portfolio grew by 1 million, since it doesn’t net out those who gave up the card. Airlines have to add large numbers to their card portfolios just to stay even let alone grow — it was shocking and unusual that only 10% of Sapphire Reserve cardmembers cancelled after year one.
- Singapore Airlines is trialing offering business class amenity kits they offer amenities in the lavatories, but don’t offer a bag for them usually in business class.
- Flight attendants, once expected to offer ‘coffee, tea, or me’, are building their own #MeToo movement
- This Christmas will mark 100 years of air mail. For years the government’s postal service was the largest customer of the airlines, subsidizing the growth of air travel in the U.S. until it all turned out to be corrupt.
- Airlines want you to check your bags because carry ons slow down boarding and cause delays (and gate checking causes even greater delays when done at the last minute, which is why gate agents are pressured to announce bins are full and start gate checking even when there’s space left — just in case).
Yet airlines charge for checked bag fees — despite checking carry on bags being better for their operation, even to the point of causing airlines to need larger fleets to maintain their schedules — because the tax code encourages it.
- People apparently request wheelchairs even though they don’t need them just to get priority boarding. Three years ago an Alaska Airlines agent requested a wheelchair meet me at my connection because I was a klutz and spilled my coffee. (They asked, “Do you need assistance?” and then decided I clearly did.) Well Delta Airlines is forced to apologize after providing a wheelchair to a deaf passenger.
Not a clear video but apparently being deaf at an airport means I need a wheelchair. pic.twitter.com/fmFn1CsSv2
— Nyle DiMarco (@NyleDiMarco) December 19, 2018
The wheelchair for the deaf person… at some airports, you may want to accept the offer. The number of electric carts carrying passengers from one terminal to another, could be dangerous for those unable to hear their horns and buzzers.
I date a blind lady for many years, who flew weekly, she was offend when the FA ask her if she needed assistance, she knew the location of every bar in the airport.
We set in the exit row once, they ask us to move, she told them she was the only person on the airplane that could see in the dark..
Quite a lady,
The delays in boarding and deplaning are almost entirely due to the large number of carry-on bags – people getting them on, horsing them into the bins, not finding enough space for them, and dragging them out at the destination.
Airlines should check bags for free and charge for carry-on items that are larger than a small personal item such as a small backpack, computer case, purse, etc.
Watch then how much faster boarding and deplaning becomes.