Southwest, Delta and United telephone customer service has been compared to ringing up the IRS.
During irregular operations, bad weather events, calling an airline is much worse than usual – because everyone else is calling too. I’m used to hearing that “we’re experiencing unusually high call volumes” all the time as an excuse for not investing in customer service. It’s actually true during storms or other outages.
If there was ever any doubt about whether Hilton Honors had become a full revenue-based program, this should help disabuse that.
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.
I’m a big fan of creative and even guerrilla marketing efforts, especially when it’s travel companies getting attention by giving away value to their customers.
Last year Barclays and Mastercard promoted the American Airlines card with in-airport cooking and golf demonstrations with giveaways for cardmembers. United is doing something bigger.
Sometimes people can be wonderful even in the midst of air travel. And small kindnesses can make all the difference to the people we touch.
You can earn 90,000 Avios for under $300. Iberia is giving out 9,000 Avios per trip for up to 10 trips. That’s amazing considering there’s no minimum fare involved. Iberia is honoring this deal and in practice you won’t even need to take the flights.
More importantly this deal scales. Have a family of 7 or lots of friends? You could earn 630,000 points for ~ $2000.
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.
An Air Canada Super Elite who takes over 150 flights a year says his business travel plans change often. Air Canada says he books refundable tickets, uses their lounges, and then cancels his tickets on days he never intends to fly at all.
If you’re near the airport and have lounge access you may think it’s just a free pub with bar snacks. But Air Canada and this frequent flyer are now locked in a legal battle that would never even exist in the United States.
Long-time Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher used to say they were in the customer service business “we just happened to fly airplanes.” Jeff Bezos talks about the importance of focusing on your customers, not on your competitors.
Those are two principles I think about in the me-too US airline world. And principles I thought of when I saw Mark Ross-Smith share on Facebook how he interacts with customers.
Air Asia flight 5583 from Kolkata to Bagdogra — a 277 mile flight — was 4.5 hours for mechanical reasons. After 90 minutes passengers were asked to get off the aircraft. It was pouring down rain and people didn’t want to leave.
Air conditioning on board aircraft will mist in highly humid conditions. Passengers contend that the captain turned up the air conditioning in order to smoke them out since they didn’t want to leave.
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 »
