5 Things American Airlines Told Their Employees After Yesterday’s Earnings Call

by Gary Leff

delta and american plane tails
Jul 27 2018

After each quarterly earnings call American Airlines senior management holds a ‘State of the Airline’ town hall with employees, where employees can ask questions and get answers.

Some of those questions were about American’s decision to become less restrictive (allow full-sized carry on bags) with their basic economy fares, and the mechanics contract (an issue that never seems to get resolved). However there were several items of broader interest to customers or that offered new insights as well,

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Delta Vassal Aeromexico Makes a Cheeky Ploy to Buy Back Its Loyalty Program

by Gary Leff

aeromexico plane
Jul 27 2018

Aeromexico which is in some sense a vassal of Delta these days doesn’t own their own frequent flyer program in its entirety. Aimia owns nearly 49%.

And following on Air Canada’s public offer to buy Aeroplan, Aeromexico came in with a lowball offer to buy back their stake in the Club Premier program. It was an offer that was already rejected, but included a kicker straight from the Air Canada playbook.

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Wide Open 4+ Business Class Awards Singapore Airlines Non-stop to Asia

by Gary Leff

flight attendants posing
Jul 26 2018

Singapore Airlines will be flying non-stop from Newark to Singapore — the world’s longest flight — starting October 11.

When the flight was first loaded into the schedule you couldn’t get premium awards. However for some reason they’ve opened the floodgates. Most flights have business class awards available. And many have four or more business class awards available.

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Free Signup for Membership Site With the Cheapest Luxury Hotel Rates on the Web

by Gary Leff

savings on rtitz
Jul 26 2018

Club1 Hotels has a new booking engine and an app and booking through them seems easier and cleaner than before. There are also tons more top hotels than before, too, when I’m searching their site I’m generally finding the inventory I want. There are cruises and car rental deals, too.

Since joining for a year with this offer is free – something they usually charge for – I don’t see a downside to signing up just in case you have a use for their deals in the coming year. And search the site because any good deals are 5% better with my promo code. They appear to take their best rate guarantee seriously, too.

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American Airlines Reorganizing its Fleet to Spend Less Money, Reduce Capacity

by Gary Leff

american plane in hangar
Jul 26 2018

On American’s earnings call this morning the airline tried to get ahead of disappointing financial performance both in absolute terms and relative to its largest competitors by announcing new aircraft deferments (reducing, or pushing into the future, capital expenses) and making other changes to their fleet in order to reduce the amount of product (seats) they sell.

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CONFIRMED: American Bringing Back Carry On Bags to Basic Economy, Punishing Customers is Bad Business

by Gary Leff

airline cabin
Jul 26 2018

On July 3rd I shared that American was poised to relax the most draconian restriction on their lowest-price Basic Economy fares, once again allowing customers on these lowest fares to bring both a personal item and a full sized carry on bag onto the plane. American refused to comment.

However this change has now been announced in this morning’s earnings release, and points to the failure of the business strategy of making your product worse in hopes of generating more revenue.

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