American Makes Its First Move to Protect Its Miami Hub From Delta-LATAM (Trying Too Hard Edition)

by Gary Leff

airport check in
Sep 30 2019

American just announced details of their Tokyo Haneda flights at the end of last week. They still have an announcement of new routes with Qantas coming up. But right after losing their LATAM partnership they’ve rushed out an announcement of new service to South America, and packaged it with other disparate scheduling moves – perhaps to make it look more robust.

After all, announcing a move by IAG low cost carrier LEVEL makes little sense when that airline isn’t even a partner.

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Culture of Fear at Cathay Pacific as Employees Rat Each Other Out for Protest Sympathies

by Gary Leff

Sep 30 2019

Mainland China forced Cathay Pacific to fire its CEO, a scalp on the wall over the airline’s insufficient initial deference to the mainland during mass protests in Hong Kong.

The Chinese government placed onerous restrictions on the airline’s flying in order to pressure the carrier to purge employees sympathetic to anti-Beijing efforts. These efforts worked to bring the airline into line, and it’s created a culture of fear at the carrier.

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This is How Baggage Claim is Supposed to Work

by Gary Leff

baggage claim
Sep 29 2019

Last year a Japanese airport employee was filmed actually cleaning luggage before passengers picked up their bags. Each and every bag gets checked for scuffs or marks on arrival, then the employee takes a white cloth to those bags which need it.

So it’s no surprise to see this Japan Airlines employee making sure every bag is laid symmetrically on the belt at baggage claim.

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Barclays Will Focus More on Co-Brand Cards, Expect New Mileage-Earning Products

by Gary Leff

credit cards
Sep 28 2019

Barclays is moving away from issuing its own cards and acquiring its own consumer financial services customers, and focusing more heavily on co-brand relationships like their deal with American Airlines. As they work to grow on the back of co-brands, they need both more partnerships and to market those partnerships more aggressively. And they need to introduce new products to sell to their co-brand customers.

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USA Today Columnist Wants to Ban Frequent Flyer Programs, Blames Them For Everything Wrong With Travel

by Gary Leff

airplane seats
Sep 28 2019

Forget about bad opinions, for over 15 years Christopher Elliott has been writing columns that get their facts wrong. His pieces haven’t gotten any better as the years have gone on.

He keeps making weak arguments that attempt to use air travel as a vehicle for his claims about social inequality (even when the details don’t work, especially since loyalty programs give customers access to perks that would normally only be available to the wealthy) and telling readers to quit frequent flyer programs for years without correcting his errors or updating his facts.

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