News and notes from around the interweb:
- Runway Girl Network thinks a major US airline is going to reduce seat pitch in domestic first class and introduce similar seats as an international premium economy. Much of the piece sounds like implausible speculation, but one or both of these basic ideas seem plausible.
- Passenger charged over $1000 for inflight internet. This was on one flight!
- Bank of America credit and debit card holders get $10 free when they enroll in Visa checkout.
- Asiana faces a 45 day suspension of their Seoul – San Francisco route over the crash of Asiana 214.
- $50 off Emirates flights from the US. Me, I’ll just redeem my Alaska Airlines miles for Emirates’ A380 first class suites.
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I have no sympathy for the guy with the huge in-flight internet bill, I am completey sure he knew what he was doing.
10 bucks on the way, thank you!
It’s easy to run a lot of data by accident (apps updating, etc), but SQ did give him the option to terminate the connection after 30MB- https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/1521434_871049239593774_8120531063084414272_n.png?oh=08ddd5e18cd64b930b33bee16753e907&oe=54DD40C6
As for tighter pitch first class domestic seats, I think the US flyer is getting what he pays for…
The article on rebranding US first class seems entirely reasonable. I think a U.S. airline could do well by having a consistent recliner based product. What is domestic first anyway, but premium economy, economy style complimentary food and a slightly larger seat. I wouldn’t expect it to be called premium economy by to have a distinct brand, but to be given a PE set of fare buckets. Domestically the product wouldn’t change, internationally it would give passengers a new option and the airline a new price discrimination opportunity.