British Airways parent IAG held their version of Investor Day on Friday. The presentation (.pdf) clearly wasn’t geared towards customers, focused as it was on cost-cutting and promising not to grow their flights. They’ve always been probably too candid, even, at these events in describing how they plan to separate customers from their money.
Air Canada flight AC125 from Toronto to Vancouver was forced to divert to Seattle last Sunday due to fog and two failed landing attempts. The plan was to refuel and make another attempt. However passengers got stuck in Seattle when the 787 went out of service for maintenance. Everyone was given hotel rooms for the night.
Some passengers on board began to worry over what would happen to their pot?
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.
On October 31st Trevor Noah asked Hillary Clinton how she killed Jeffrey Epstein. Then on Tuesday the San Diego airport decided to throw down its own gauntlet on the matter, using the airport’s paging system to announce an Epstein Coverup.
American Airlines has done a great job adding fast internet across their fleet. Connectivity – and thus inflight productivity – is a great reason to choose American (or Delta) over competitors.
There are, however, a few challenges, including the ‘dark’ legacy US Airways 757s and poor-performing international wifi from Panasonic.
On Wednesday American Airlines flight AA4439 from Atlanta to New York LaGuardia, an Embraer ERJ-175 (large regional jet) operated by Republic Airways, suffered runaway trim during climb out. “Runaway trim” became a well known phenomenon over the last year as it’s associated with both Boeing 737 MAX crashes.
Listening to the air traffic control – the pilots and ATC both did an excellent job – is eerie. Thank goodness everyone made it safely back to Atlanta.
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.
United has now done something that seems like it could be following Delta’s model. They’ve filed Economy Plus fares that treat their extra legroom seats as a separate cabin. These fares come with free Economy Plus seat assignments, rather than paying extra for extra legroom seats.
A year and a half ago United Airlines President Scott Kirby shared a plan with investors to offer a separate ‘domestic premium economy’ product. This could be the start of that plan.
We’re all familiar with lies, damn lies, and statistics. The new program has higher redemption prices than Marriott Rewards. It has weaker elite recognition than Starwood Preferred Guest. There is virtually no enforcement of elite benefits at the property level, at best paying our rewards to hotels for elite satisfaction scores.
Do you like Marriott Bonvoy more than both Marriott Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest? I’d love to see if we’ve got an 8-to-1 margin here… or if this is just Sorenson being Sorenson.
Avios is a driver of profit, strong relative to size and regulation, but does less of a good job driving airline revenue that one would expect. Most program members are inactive, which isn’t surprising, and members prefer inflated award costs of cash co-pays (fuel surcharges).
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 »
