United Airlines President Scott Kirby spoke yesterday at the Morgan Stanley 7th Annual Laguna Conference. There probably no one in the industry that’s been more ‘by the numbers’ than Kirby, and in my view no one that’s been more an enemy of customer experience. I’ve often called him a destroyer of airlines.
Yet he told the gathering that “more and more” United has to be “competing on quality instead of just schedule and price.”
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.
Word leaked two years ago that JetBlue’s founder Dave Neeleman had registered a new airline company. The plan to fly Airbus A220s was supposed to be two years away, but now it seems he’s ready to start next year using planes being retired by Brazilian carrier Azul.
A French business traveler died while having sex on a business trip. Although the man’s employer argued that he wasn’t “carrying out professional duties” when he had the cardiac arrest in the woman’s hotel room, under French law “an employer is responsible for any accident occurring during a business trip.”
How far have we fallen that American Airlines considers a hot dog to be a meal in international first class rather than the top off to a good Costco run?
German airline Condor was flying from Frankfurt to Cancun on February 6th when the Airbus A330 declared an emergency about 880 nautical miles west of Shannon, Ireland.
There was reported smoke in the cockpit. The “flight crew donned their oxygen masks” and declared mayday via ACARS, the digital short message system, because communications were hobbled.
LifeMiles is one of the best frequent flyer programs for advanced miles and points collectors because they have hidden deals and there are tricks to reduce the price of awards.
I once heard the head of the program give a presentation where he called miles earned by flying “bad miles” and miles sold to partners (like banks) and to customers “good miles.” This frequent flyer program is basically the consolidator for Star Alliance airline excess premium cabin inventory. Lots of ways to get their miles cheap, and use them for seats that their partners aren’t going to sell for cash (saver award inventory).
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.
One of the 10 best deals in all of travel is using Etihad Guest miles to fly business class on Royal Air Maroc.
You can transfer American Express, Citibank, and Capital One miles to Etihad and then Etihad charges just 44,000 miles each way for any trip on Royal Air Marco that is over 2000 miles.
Choose the airline with the best schedule, where they’re equivalent with the best reliability, and for regular coach comfort go with Southwest. Since I need to work inflight pretty much all the time I prefer American or Delta, United still isn’t an option though if I lived on Staten Island I’ve fly out of Newark and sacrifice productivity.
No airline is all things to all people, no airline frequent flyer program among those four carriers is a real differentiator and reason to go out of your way to fly a specific airline, but it’s useful to stick with one carrier and earn status where you can. Your miles will be earned through things other than flying and there flexible points transfer programs are best.
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 »
