How to Get American Airlines to Short Check Your Luggage

by Gary Leff

baggage claim
Apr 05 2019

Airlines don’t like it when you check a bag to a connecting city rather than to your final destination. It turns out though that you can short check bags, it’s just tough. Generally speaking airlines will let you do it on connections of 6-12 hours, and will require you to do it on 12+ hour connections (they don’t want to hold the bag that long).

I was interested to learn the official American Airlines policy for short-checking bags, and unsurprisingly it’s very much linked to hidden city ticketing. The policy was just updated last month,

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United Eliminating Award Charts and Close-in Booking Fees

by Gary Leff

united-planes-runway
Apr 05 2019

Now United is following Delta, eliminating award charts. Prices won’t go higher for travel, though, until November 15 and members may see lower prices today.

United is also eliminating close-in booking fees that range $25 – $75 for some members based on elite status for any award travel November 15, 2019 onward.

I know how I’m betting this turns out, based on nearly 20 years watching and studying this space. I’d love, however, to be wrong.

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Why Loyalty Programs Always Disappoint You

by Gary Leff

zimbabwe currency
Apr 05 2019

Tyler Cowen’s new book coming out April 9, Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero contains this passage final its chapter “If business is so good, why is it so disliked?”

It’s not about loyalty programs per se, but loyalty marketing is one of the key ways that businesses attempt to trascend the transactional and make us loyal. Brand positioning, charitable giving, along with recognition and reward, can temporarily make us see the business as aligning with our values and integrating with our life. And then we’re disappointed:

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Here’s What it Takes to Get Fired as a Flight Attendant in Australia

by Gary Leff

qantasplane
Apr 04 2019

It’s difficult to get hired on as an employee in many professions in Australia because it’s so difficult to get fired, and because benefits can be so generous. Frequently workers are taken on as contractors rather than employees.

Qantas has learned this over and over, for instance when a flight attendant was awarded six months’ pay because the government determined it was ‘harsh’ to fire him after he was found with “a can and a bottle of beer in his jacket, two 50ml bottles of vodka in his trousers and a 50ml bottle of gin in his bag” as he got off a flight.

Here’s what it actually takes to get fired without a big pay off in Australia.

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Passenger Downs 4 Bottles of Beer, Vapes E-cigarette, Punches Flight Attendant all Before His Honeymoon

by Gary Leff

easyjet
Apr 04 2019

In February a man downed 4 bottles of Stella Artois at London’s Gatwick airport before a 9 a.m. easyJet flight to Egypt for his honeymoon.

He boarded the plane smoking an e-cigarette and was told he had to stop vaping. He responded to the flight attendant’s instruction with a homophobic outburst — before “knock[ing] out one of the cabin crew..with two punches” and sending him to the ground and then proceeding to attack a second flight attendant who responded to the situation. He’ll be spending 7 months in jail, will his new spouse wait for him?

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Leave it to United to Hide Cuts in a Sensible Change to Meal Service

by Gary Leff

first class seats
Apr 03 2019

Faster dinner service on short late night flights makes sense and United still has some of the best bedding in business class in the world — customers should be able to benefit from it with sleep. It will make even more sense once a Polaris lounge opens at Washington Dulles for passengers to have dinner in prior to flights. It’s just that United seems to take every opportunity to find ways to shave from their product, which isn’t what they said they were doing and disappoints me.

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Why Passengers are Increasingly Choosing Airlines Based on More than Just Schedule and Price

by Gary Leff

airplane seats
Apr 03 2019

It’s a fools errand for airlines like American or United to offer a lowest common denominator product. When a business produces a commodity product, the lowest cost producer wins. Spirit is at a great advantage because American and United will always have higher costs.

Given their cost structure legacy airlines need to earn a revenue premium. And customers are already beginning to make buying decisions on more than schedule and price a trend that is only going to become more pronounced as passengers are presented with information during the booking process on what to expect from their flights like seat power and high speed internet.

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