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.
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Malaysia’s recently ousted Prime Minister Najib Razak cannot leave the country while he faces corruption charges. He took his family on holiday to Langkawi and apparently took quite a lot of baggage on the trip.
He’s a Platinum member of the Malaysia Airlines Enrich status. One imagines whether he meets the criteria or not that he’d have this status. And his Platinum appears to come with a very special perk. His reservation shows that he checked 535kg of luggage and had the 17,000 Malaysia Ringgit excess baggage fee waived.
American Airlines announced last month that they’re ending their Chicago – Beijing flight in October.
American’s Vice President – Planning Vasu Raja told employees in Chicago last week at a question and answer session that Chicago flights to Asia are mostly connecting traffic, that they rely on connections from cities with low fares and often their own non-stop flights to the same destinations, and that higher fuel costs make it even harder to sustain flights than before.
Yesterday a group of teenagers – who had entered the country on their own – were being escorted without parents onboard an American Airlines flight from McAllen, Texas to Dallas and onward to New York LaGuardia.
American Airlines is predicting that British Airways will fly to more mid-sized US cities than they do today, and that American is going to increase the size of the planes they fly to London Heathrow.
However despite complaining that there aren’t enough premium seats flying Chicago – London, American currently plans to reduce the number of premium seats flying Chicago – London (and to reduce the number of premium seats on two major aircraft types they fly).
Delta listed a job for a sales associate on LinkedIn whose role would be to “develop relationships and ties in the Austin market with key community and industry organizations to support Delta’s Focus City initiative.”
Earlier today I wrote about flight attendants expressing concern over transporting kids who were being separated from their families as they’re split up under immigration laws. Both American Airlines and United have expressed solidarity with their crew, which isn’t surprising.
The Department of Homeland Security has come out swinging against both airlines.
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 »
