Since US Airways took over revenue management at American Airlines, the carrier has been incredibly tightfisted with both business class saver award inventory and confirmed upgrade space to business as well. When inventory has popped up it’s been for only a brief period of time.
Right now is one of those times, at least for travel between the U.S. and Europe over winter.
In 2017 American Airlines surveyed employees on the state of the company and the results were abysmal. In 2018 they surveyed again and didn’t even share full results with employees. Now they’re going to ask fewer questions that take only five minutes to answer.
BA announced the roll out schedule for their new business class seat. They hadn’t previously shared that Airbus A380s would ever get the new seat, though now we know they will. However the timetable to put new seats on their planes also reveals that it’ll be 2025 before the project is completed and that’s just for aircraft based at London Heathrow (and not Gatwick).
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.
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 »
