How to Completely Miss the Point of Airline Seat Back Entertainment

airline cabin
Oct 22 2019

The Points Guy ran a love letter to American Airlines a piece laying out the case why it’s good for airlines to get rid of seat back entertainment. Each of their arguments is wrong.

What’s more, streaming content has its problems. Customers may be required to watch through the carrier’s app, but aren’t always clearly told to download it until it’s too late in the air. Airlines haven’t always invested in the same up to date content for streaming as seat back (I’m looking at you, American). And what happens if the U.S. government brings back an electronics ban?

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Will Southwest Airlines Buy JetBlue?

airline cabin
Oct 22 2019

The underlying issue isn’t “will Southwest Airlines try to buy another airline” it’s “how does Southwest Airlines grow without the Boeing 737 MAX in service and continued production?” And if Southwest isn’t in a position to grow its business, it can’t command the historically high price-earnings multiple it’s enjoyed relative to peers in the U.S. airline industry.

Mergers are costly. They rarely generate the promised benefits. They involve combining IT systems, fleets, unionized work forces, and company cultures. They’re fraught with risk. Southwest Airlines needs the MAX to be flying again soon, and likely to act on a plan to diversify its fleet (with the attenuated costs and complexity that brings) — potentially with Embraer E2 jets.

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Citi’s Newest Transfer Partner – Aeromexico – Is Absolutely Useless

aeromexico plane
Oct 21 2019

Club Premier is 49% owned by Aimia, the company that spun off Air Canada’s Aeroplan, lost 80% of its market value when Air Canada announced its intention to start a competing program, and then sold the program back to the airline. Aimia has the demonstrated capability to run a good operation. In this case however they are part of one of the worst frequent flyer programs.

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British Airways Flight Crew Behaving Badly in Singapore

plane tails
Oct 21 2019

British Airways flight crew have a reputation for being some of the rowdiest in the world, and ‘things to tend to happen’ during Singapore layovers (Johannesburg, Las Vegas, Bangkok, and Nairobi are also well known trouble spots).

Over the summer it was a game of naked spin the bottle that got out of hand in Singapore. Two years ago it was crew running naked through hotel corridors, stealing fish.

Now during a Singapore layover “[s]ome of the crew got plastered, allegedly using drinks smuggled off the BA in-flight trolley” and this led to an altercation in the lobby and a suspension.

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