United Wants to Return to New York JFK — And Doesn’t Know How to Do It

by Gary Leff

united
May 31 2018

United pulled out of New York JFK entirely in fall 2015. A year ago the airline’s President Scott Kirby said that was a mistake. Now he wants to return to New York JFK and doesn’t know how to do it.

When the airline left JFK it was because bean counters looked only at revenue and expense for the those particular JFK flights and missed the bigger revenue picture — lucrative corporate contracts which made other routes profitable, and which they lost without the JFK service.

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New Class Action Lawsuit Over AA.com Airfare Pricing

by Gary Leff

american airlines cabin
May 31 2018

The plaintiff would like you to think of this case as picking a pack of gum up from the store shelf, getting to the register, and being asked for more money than the posted sign.

I think of this more as showing the clerk at the register the list of what you want to buy, including an auto-generated price estimate, and the clerk goes in the back and checks and says they’re all out of the limited inventory of discounted product but they’re still willing to sell it to you at regular price.

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Etihad Set to Devalue Miles at the End of June

by Gary Leff

etihad promo
May 31 2018

Over the past three years Etihad has devalued its program several times. That’s to be expected because it was so much better than others in the region. Qatar Airways caught me by surprise over the last month first announcing booking fees for awards – just a straight-up tax on redemptions – and then increasing the price of most awards about 60% overnight without notice. The earn and burn program went from middling to terrible overnight.

And now Etihad is making changes again. They’re only describing the changes in broad strokes, even though they’re going to be implemented in a month.

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Singapore Airlines Business Class Award Space for 4 Passengers, US-Asia

by Gary Leff

first class cabin
May 30 2018

If you have Singapore Airlines miles first class awards turn out to be easy to book — on their old 777 product from Los Angeles, and flying Airbus A380s all over the world. Provided of course that the A380 doesn’t touch the U.S. (New York JFK – Frankfurt) and isn’t their newest product.

And Singapore Airlines business class awards are frequently very available too and that’s true even on U.S. routes, especially from Houston and Los Angeles.

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United’s President Hates Fare Sales, Thinks Their Product is Good Enough

by Gary Leff

first class seats
May 30 2018

United Airlines President Scott Kirby is probably the most interesting airline executive to listen to in the country because he lays out his thinking clearly in public. I think most everything he does is bad for his customers. But he has a model for how the world works and he defends it. He spoke today at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference.

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