We all know the usual tropes, like ‘there are only two kinds of luggage: carry on and lost’ and that someone who checks a bag for a trip every week is spending at least 2 days a year at baggage claim. Checking bags is something you want to avoid if you possibly can.
Here’s how to avoid being forced to gate check a bag when the contents inside are too important to risk.
On Monday I wrote about an incident of American Airlines serving 16 month old food on a Dallas Fort-Worth – London flight. That’s, apparently, within the industry norm. United says they’ll serve food up to 6 months after it’s been frozen. Delta says they don’t usually have food sitting this long but it can be up to 12 months.
A simple set of recommendations, all within reach and none unprecedented, could make American Airlines not just the largest in the U.S. but also the best: improve the operation, improve the domestic premium product, offer reasonable award availability to sustain the driver of the airline’s profitability and compete in the most important markets.
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.
Last year American Airlines CEO Doug Parker explained in detail why his airline would never provide the flexibility that Southwest does. He called Southwest “the cattle car” and said Southwest doesn’t “have a lot of business customers on their airplanes.”
That certainly hasn’t been my experience.
American Airlines has two card issuers, Citibank and Barclays. I have (3) different American Airlines credit cards. One of those cards has a weird new perk, and it’s more versatile than I initially realized.
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.
At this morning’s American Airlines shareholders meeting CEO Doug Parker claimed “there’s no doubt our customers have noticed the improvement that’s been made to the inflight product.”
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.
Just prior to airline deregulation, when Southwest Airlines had to start competing with Texas International Airlines and Braniff offering cheap fares between Houston and Dellas, they started giving out “to go” bottles of alcohol to full fare customers. They became the largest liquor distributor in the state.
For many years Southwest Airlines offered free drinks inflight to all customers. They cut that back to offering free drinks only during key business travel times. And then in 1988 they eliminated free alcohol from their flights, but started giving coupons to frequent flyers.
Here’s how you can get free and discounted drinks on Southwest Airlines today.
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 »
