American produced a film to promote travel by air in 1933. Few could afford to fly. American declared, “All seats are first class seats, all passengers first class passengers.” Back then “One of the grandest voyages imaginable is this trip from Chicago to New York.”
Vasu Raja is out at American Airlines. He had a bold view of the world of aviation, and wasn’t afraid to break things. But at large public companies, you can only do that if you succeed.
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There’s a secret spot in the Austin airport that two travelers found for a sleep – the American Airlines Admirals Club, and you don’t actually have to be a member.
Bloomberg is reporting that Vasu Raja was let go by American Airlines because of a Bain consulting report saying that corporate customers and travel management companies were unhappy with American’s new systems that hey were supposed to be using. My understanding is that this is inaccurate.
Friday’s United Airlines Newark to Dubrovnik flight was reportedly oversold in business class. United doesn’t normally sell more tickets in business class than they have seats, and it doesn’t appear that the aircraft was swapped to one with a smaller business class cabin.
Nobody would take the airline’s generous offers of compensation, even though “[t]hey offered 2500 and then 3000.”
Southwest Airlines doesn’t offer assigned seats, although that may be changing with a premium seat offering expected to be announced this fall.
In the meantime, even though they do not sell seat assignments, they still manage to earn hundreds of millions of dollars each year on their seats.
A reader shared a complaint sent to Delta about a gate agent in Detroit working a flight to Atlanta who was wearing a Palestine flag pin on Wednesday.
Three Black men have filed a federal lawsuit against American Airlines today, alleging racial discrimination after eight Black male passengers were forced off Phoenix – New York JFK flight 832 in January due to a complaint about body odor.
Notably, the men say they did not know each other before the flight and were not seated together. What they had in common was that they were black.
Once the plane takes off, and the middle seat in your row remains empty, does it now belong to you for the rest of the flight? That’s the question that a passenger wanted to know after a recent trip where they were called nasty names for trying to protect the space.
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 »
