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.
Back in June Thai Airways, unable to transport many passengers, pivoted into the prepared meals space offering food pre-orders for pickup at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi and Don Muang airports. Now they’ve taken their culinary aspirations and grown that into a new airport cafe.
The new restaurant just opened yesterday, and is decorated with real airplane seats, model airplanes, and “even an airstair at the entrance that would (probably) make you miss boarding their iconic purple planes.”
Barry Michaels has been trying to start an airline for at least 28 years. First under the name Family Airlines, and then Avatar Airlines, he’s had an idea to fly Boeing 747s between leisure destinations. He went to prison for tax and securities fraud raising money for the venture. The DOT insisted he give up control of the project.
Now he’s got a new pitch to investors: that now is the perfect time to start a new airline, because used 747s for domestic routes can be acquired cheap, and look at all those furloughed employees!
On August 31, Ukraine International Airlines flight 6212 from Antalya, Turkey to Kyiv, Ukraine touched down at Boryspil International Airport like any other flight on any other day. But it wasn’t any other flight, because a passenger – an “over-heated mum” – decided she needed to cool off from the warm flight, so she “decided to stroll along a plane’s wing” and has now been banned from the airline.
She opened the emergency exit and took a walk outside on the Boeing 737’s wing shortly after landing, in order to “get some air.”
While it’s nothing like injecting your boarding pass into your hand with an NFC chip, a user on TikTok offers a ‘life hack’ on how you’ll never lose your boarding pass: print it on five feet worth of paper.
But what about environmental concerns? I think this must be some kind of Woke Daily Double because you’re not just flying you’re wasting paper, too.
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.
Airlines are much smaller today than they were a year ago. They expect to continue to be smaller even a year from now and perhaps even two years from now. So they need fewer people on staff.
United, which was the first and most vocal about the need to shed staff, is now out with their layoff plans and they’re looking at shedding 16,370 staff come October, according to an internal memo:
While I’ve been vocally against airline bailouts, one of my main frustration is that proponents have couched their support in terms of ‘the workers’ even though much of the money goes to the airlines themselves and protects investors and creditors. There’s been very little honest attempt to make the true case for payroll support grants.
So let me at least lay out what seems to be the strongest argument against my own position. It comes down to a bet that we’ll be past the virus in April 2021, that airlines won’t invest enough in their businesses to be ready to grow in the meantime, and that the country benefits most from having airline capacity.
The American Airlines flight attendants union, Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), is exceptionally weak. They’ve been dysfunctional for years. I’ve written in the past about efforts by the larger Association of Flight Attendants, which is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America and AFL-CIO, to get their nose in under the tent.
Reading through the mid-August minutes of the APFA’s Executive Committee meeting I was initially struck by just three things.
Airlines have been working to use their loyalty programs to shift customers to higher fares, and to make status a benefit for only those flying on those high fares. Eliminating change fees on the one hand, while doubling down on using Basic Economy as the tool to segment customers, is the latest attempt at doing this.
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 »
