American isn’t just cramming seats closer together, so that customers will have an even worse experience when they return to the skies, they’re doing it now to planes that have seat back video – even though the airline had promised these planes would be done last.
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.
Points.com says people are still buying on average 100 million frequent flyer miles a day.
And at an average of, say, 1.5 cents per point (hotel points generally go for less than airline miles) that’s just $1.5 million per day across all of those programs. What they haven’t told us is how the 100 million points total compares to what people were buying before. I’m guessing the mileage sales business is down by half.
A new SEC filing has details on the most recent United Airlines corporate executive compensation. United’s CEO Oscar Munoz will take $0 in base salary until June 30. Incoming CEO Scott Kirby will do the same. But how much of a cut is that, really?
Executive compensation is unpopular during tough times for a company. Of course if United makes it through to the other side of COVID-19 Kirby may earn his pay more than ever before.
Major U.S. airlines have waived change fees for new ticket purchases, to encourage customers to spend money in a world of uncertainty. You won’t be penalized for changing plans if you buy a new ticket now and need to change it later – you’ll retain a travel credit for future purchases with the airline.
They’ve been extending the policy little-by-little, ostensibly because it might only be necessary for a short time. It won’t be. These change fee waivers on ticket purchases are going to need to continue for many months, perhaps through the end of the year. That’s not just for the convenience of passengers, but so that people will be willing to buy tickets at all.
The way the law was written the administration doesn’t have to just give away all the money. While the industry and Democratic senators (at the behest of airline unions) have argued that the money shouldn’t come with requirements, the Treasury Secretary reportedly placed a call to airline CEOs laying out the requirements for the $25 billion in payroll grants.
On April 1 the President said that “they’re doing tests on airlines – very strong tests – for getting on, getting off.” It’s possible he was referring to taking passenger temperatures rather than administering COVID-19 tests. However even that isn’t happening broadly either.
Frontier doesn’t plan to start. Instead they’re making passengers promise to take their own temperatures and to wash their hands. And they’re asking flight crew to do the same.
Delta Air Lines has instructed flight attendants testing positive for COVID-19 to “refrain from notifying” people they’ve worked with, and not to post to social media about it. Now they say they won’t punish anyone who violates their directive.
Meanwhile American Airlines flight attendants are reportedly resorting to raiding catering carts and emergency kits for masks and gloves.
Hilton has published the DoubleTree hotels cookie recipe. Normally more than 30 million of these cookies are baked annually. They’ve even been baked on the space station. But since you’re grounded Hilton is giving out the recipe.
On January 14 the World Health Organization parroted China that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus. The next day the U.S. had its first identified case but we wouldn’t know it for six more days. New York didn’t confirm it had a case until the end of February.
Vaughn Cordle was a United Airlines Boeing 787 pilot, flying out of Beijing several times a month. He noticed an uptick in sick passengers on his flights between China and Washington Dulles as far back as December, including a co-pilot making Beijing roundtrips. He fell ill in mid-January.
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 »
