I’m more excited about air travel today than I have been in a long time, and it’s all because a promotion Air Canada ran became so frustrating, the incredible demand for Aeroplan’s first-ever mileage sale offer.
And that was before Aeroplan decided to award even more bonus miles than they had promised.
Early on in the pandemic I told you to wait to cancel your travel plans. Two months ago I suggested that future plans shouldn’t cancelled right away because if the travel provider cancels on you then you’ll be entitled to a refund, while if you cancel plans when a flight is still operating all you can get is a voucher.
Many consumers were duped by airlines into taking vouchers when entitled to a refund. It’s not too late for them to get their money back.
American Airlines hasn’t been perfect, but it’s charted a path different from United and even Delta through the pandemic. They’ve generally honored refunds for cancelled flights, rather than choosing to illegally conserve cash the way United and others have attempted to do, and they’re plotting a course to avoid employee furloughs.
But they’re not capturing the value from these moves because they’ve failed to craft a narrative for the airline around being a better company, that frames them as the underdog and motivates employees and generates customer loyalty going forward. American Airlines can change that.
Emirates President Sir Tim Clark is set to retire in June after 35 years with the airline and 17 as in his current role.
The 70 year old, who began his career at British Caledonian in 1972, gave an interview offering his perspective on where the airline industry is headed as it grapples with the coronavirus crisis. There are four key takeaways – including a challenging view of the virus itself and why it means we don’t need to remove seats from planes.
Atlanta’s airport is the most corrupt in the country (although in fairness Detroit may be a close second).
In Atlanta if you want to open a restaurant you donate to a political campaign and pay the former mayor’s daughter. The airport’s former manager was fired for being insufficiently corrupt, and then the city council buried the payments that bought his silence. Now a new bribery scandal and a guilty plea.
Air Canada is launching something really special – what may be the best mileage purchase sale ever. And you can double dip with their offer to let you earn elite status based on earning miles for non-flight activity, including purchasing miles through this deal.
Up until this year anyone who claimed to need emotional support had been exempt from the rules about what kind of animals to bring, how many, and at what cost. We saw pit bulls, horses, turkeys, and birds of all kinds.
It turns out that exemptions to requirements for wearing a face mask work exactly the same way that bringing an emotional support animal onto a plane used to.
The airline world lobby group IATA – the International Air Transportation Association – has been consistently awful throughout the pandemic. They’ve argued for government subsidies and that passengers shouldn’t be entitled to refunds for cancelled flights.
During the American Airlines first quarter earnings call last week they discussed the option to retire their fleet of 15 Airbus A330-200s. I speculated back in March that the A330-200s might leave the fleet.
However American Airlines has told employees that they are parking but not retiring these aircraft. Do not expect them to come back soon, though, because they are being stored “into 2022.”
U.S. airlines are telling Congress they ‘hope’ not to ‘have to’ come back for money subsidies. That means, of course, that they expect to seek more taxpayer money and they’re beginning to sow the ground now.
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 »
