Boy what a rough past week for KLM in social media as a result of three separate instances of self-pwnage.
The first incident is dumb, airlines don’t question the safety of air travel, that’s been a basic rule since the earliest days. However the second and third instances may be more revealing than they may seem at first blush — culturally and institutionally rather than saying something unique to the airline itself.
Pocketing $150 in Southwest travel (10,000 points) from renting your car out is huge, it could make sense to rent it to a friend for $50++ since for the net cost of transaction charges they’d pocket 2000 points and you’d have 10,000.
I wouldn’t go transferring over 75,000 points to earn IHG’s top Spire Elite status, since the opportunity cost of those points is quite high. It could make sense to top off an account that has already earned quite a few points in order to get there. And you could use IHG’s status to status match to another hotel chain though bear in mind that Hyatt doesn’t currently match this way.
Impossible to Parody. The CEOs of United, Delta, and American are meeting with President Trump this afternoon to promote protectionism and argue that the U.S. should abrogate its treaty obligations with the U.A.E. and Qatar because those smaller airlines receive subsidies from their home countries — an argument the carriers have spent the past four years making without credibility or success.
One million miles is an achievement in its own right. The rapping crewmember here is awesome (so is the background dancer), and the passenger was given a bottle of champagne at the end. That’s in addition to the actual benefits of million miler status.
With negotiations being cancelled, with the company back in court, with mechanics under court order to perform and the FAA expressing heightened sensitivity, as with most things it all comes back to Patrick Swayze in Road House. It’ll get worse before it gets better.
According to the passenger the family was filming the flight attendant because they found her rude on the plane.
Apparently the mother in the family had fallen ill and sought direction on “properly dispos[ing] of her throw up” and the family claims that the flight attendant responded “oh please I’ve been dealing with you people for 30 years.” They also claim the flight attendant followed up on her threat with customs staff.
Free internet underscores that the economics of bundling are when a the marginal cost of providing a product to an additional customer is near-zero, it makes more sense to charge for it as a package rather than separately. That’s how cable companies maximize revenue.
The mantra of ‘unbundling’ which has been accepted as gospel in the airline industry for the past decade doesn’t always make sense.
On the 737 MAX Boeing compensated for larger engines with an intended safety feature where if the Angle of Attack sensor detected too steep of a pitch, the MCAS system would push down the nose of the plane. The A321neo seems to have a tendency to pitch up as well.
There’s a viral essay circulating, “Dear American Airlines, I Hate You With My Whole Heart”. It’s not really about American Airlines, but what it’s like to deal with how complex airlines have made buying air travel for the once a year flyer. Read that way it’s one of the most important things airline executives can read this year, because profiting primarily by not delivering travel for customer money isn’t going to be a great strategy in the long run.
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 »
