Delta, American and United keep arguing that Emirates, Qatar, and Etihad accept government subsidies and that this violates the Open Skies treaties that the U.S. has signed with the UAE and Qatar. Only it doesn’t violate those treaties. At all. Anyone that reads the treaties knows that.
In the old Aaron Sorkin HBO series The Newsroom the cast makes an important point about journalism. The media is biased towards fairness and simply doesn’t call a lie a lie.
American used to share a ton of information about the financials of the AAdvantage program in their annual 10-K SEC filing. They stopped doing that last year. They no longer tell us how many members there are in the program, how many miles were issued, sold to third parties, and remain outstanding like they did up until two years ago.
Nonetheless as a result of their newly filed 2017 SEC 10-K form we know that the percentage of American’s seats occupied by award travelers dropped again in 2017, after a drop in 2016. When US Airways management took over there was clearly a new philosophy of not releasing award seats to customers.
Whenever there’s an aircraft evacuation there are photos of passengers taking personal items out of the plane. Sometimes it’s a purse or laptop bag from underneath their seat. Other times it’s the rollaboard out of the overhead bin.
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ViaSat internet has been free. They’ve been working out kinks since the beginning. On the inaugural 737 MAX flight at the end of November ViaSat internet simply didn’t work much. When it did work it wasn’t fast.
ViaSat installations are working better now. A few planes have Gogo and ViaSat retrofits now. And American is prepared to start charging in March.
Airlines don’t want passengers onboard who will spread disease or cause a diversion. Flight crew aren’t always best-positioned to judge this, but they’re in a position where they have to. And airlines often do things out of an abundance of caution, although nearly every time you hear that phrase it’s a cover for stupidity.
Beth Evans was flying Emirates from Birmingham in the U.K. to Dubai. She told her boyfriend about her cramps. A flight attendant overheard the conversation and started quizzing her about it.
Dropping to 20 or 24 business class seats would make awards and upgrades super difficult on the aircraft (awards are nearly impossible now in business class as it is).
It would represent a loss of 14% or 28% of the business class seats on the aircraft. In contrast United’s Boeing 787-8s have 36 business class seats.
Through February 25 premium economy starts at $999 for US-Asia roundtrip and business class starts at $1999 for US-Europe roundtrip.
You can travel May 1 through August 31 for business class, May 1 through December 14 for premium economy.
Air Canada has introduced ‘basic economy’ fares on domestic flights within Canada.
The goal remains to discourage customers from buying the cheapest fares in hopes they pay more to avoid these restrictions — while not taking their business elsewhere to another carrier.
Brit Morin lost her wedding/engagement ring on a United flight last week on United flight 1908 from Newark to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
The ring was found. And more importantly it wasn’t kept and pawned or auctioned off on eBay, it was given to a pilot headed for San Francisco so that they could return the rings to Brit.
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 »
