U.S. airlines need to block middle seats because their brands don’t convey cleanliness or trust. When you don’t have cleanliness and trust as a brand, you have to massively overshoot on investment to credibly signal ‘this time is different’.
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.
The rate of growth in air travel has slowed. Forward bookings actually fell after 8 straight weeks of growth. And travel searches are down.
Hyatt and Chase, their co-brand card partner, have juiced things a bit so that card spend counts even more towards elite status through June. And getting the card now does, too.
When people (1) fly because they have to, and (2) don’t have many competitive options because of reduced schedules, inflight product doesn’t drive business. And airlines are looking to conserve cash. Even when business turns around, it’ll take time for product to recover as carriers try to manage their debt burdens.
In the near-term, airlines are restoring their schedules (somewhat) on domestic routes and there are (some) more passengers willing to travel. That means competition starts to matter.
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.
Aeroflot has been circumventing the Russian government’s ban on international passenger flights, according to media reports, by selling tickets to passengers on flights officially labeled as cargo-only.
This has included “flights to New York, Paris, London, Frankfurt, Seoul and Tel Aviv since at least early June” according to airline sources.
Video shows a Miami airport police officer punching a black woman. She had just yelled at him, “You black, you acting like you’re white but you’re really black. What’re you gonna do?” He claims “she headbutted me” but the video does not appear to support that.
Once American Airlines is no longer restricted from laying off employees as a result of the CARES Act – October 1, 2020 – they will start staffing flights were fewer flight attendants. It will mean more furloughs and lower service levels.
Just before the pandemic grew out of control, American Airlines data revealed that frequent customers represented a declining share of airline revenue.
It seemed that a combination of award chart devaluation (higher prices for the best awards), product devaluations (less space per passenger on domestic narrowbody aircraft) and making status harder to earn (minimum spend requirement and taking away the ability to earn as much towards that via credit card) had in fact pushed frequent customer share of wallet towards competitors.
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 »
