Two weeks ago American was asking flight attendants to take leave with no pay. Unsurprisingly they didn’t have enough takers. Pilots, however, could take leave or early retirement at about two-thirds pay.
American is now offering paid early retirement and paid leave across the company, not just for pilots, though of course the leave options aren’t as generous as what pilots receive.
Delta’s current inflight magazine Delta Sky launched in 2009. The magazine was outsourced, published by MSP Communications. It used Delta’s brand, was distributed on Delta aircraft, and Delta’s media team promotes it on the Delta.com website. It’s always been presented as Delta’s.
However writers were not Delta employees. Now they’ve lost their jobs.
The U.S. airlines have long survived on government cash and government protection from competition (whether through foreign ownership, or long term gate leases at government airports). We continue to feed that, and then complain when effectively nationalized airlines don’t deliver the product consumers want. We have only ourselves to blame.
A bankruptcy-first approach would have meant equity and creditors take a haircut before taxpayers. It’s not at all clear a bailout would have been needed even then.
American’s wholly-owned regional subsidiary Envoy Air lost a 51 year old Chicago O’Hare gate agent named José Vázquez. Just Saturday Envoy Air had shared the information with its Chicago team that “two (2) of our Envoy employees here at ORD tested positive for the Coronavirus (COVID-19).”
As with almost every question, whether to jump on a travel deal now depends “on what margin?” Just how good a deal is it? That’s because there are some great deals now, but the future is uncertain.
You likely give up very little by waiting so it has to be a truly uncommon opportunity to spur a purchase in the current environment.
The service we’re used to from airlines doesn’t come close to what was offered in many ways in the late 1990s, but it’s a lot better than we experienced from 2001 through 2010. The ups and downs of the airline industry have determined the level of investment in its product, and we’re about to see what down times mean for product again – even once we’re able to fly in a way that’s closer to ‘normal’.
A year ago I offered advice on sanitizing credit cards. Since then I learned that your credit cards are actually dirtier than the bathrooms at New York’s Penn Station.
Now as we try to sanitize our hands, and everything we touch, especially the few times we go outside this has greater relevance than ever. Did you hand your card over to a store clerk? Did you stick it inside a card reader machine, and what was on the last card that was in there? I actually sanitized my cards, even before the current crisis.
I’ve cancelled American AAdvantage award tickets and Delta SkyMiles tickets for travel in the next month and neither program charged their usual mileage redeposit fee. These fee waivers are normally in place for top tier elite frequent flyers, but where a ‘no change fee’ fee waiver applies to travel, the redeposit fee for mileage tickets has been waived as well.
Not so with United, although that finally seems to have changed.
The airline bailout passed last week requires carriers taking the money not to furlough employees through September, and to maintain air service to all of the cities they serve. However that’s going to mean ghost flights, that don’t make cost sense (or environmental sense).
So they’ve already come up with a way around it that will be broached with the Trump administration. It basically calls for waiving anti-trust rules so that airlines could codeshare with each other, and have those codeshares count as retaining service.
Everything has changed. You may have opened a new small business credit card, and your business is temporarily closed under a ‘shelter in place’ order. Or you’re just pending less in light of uncertainty in the economy.
Maybe you’re stuck at home, buying groceries but you had planned for big expenses you’re putting off (like travel!). I’m sure there are many readers wondering how they’re going to meet the minimum spend requirement for those credit card bonuses.
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 »
