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.
Air Canada announced new Montreal – Tokyo Narita service this morning operated by a Boeing 787. The flight will be daily during the summer and will operate 3 times a week in winter.
The flight is already bookable, and it was loaded at the outset with plenty of award availability. In fact every single day from launch through end of schedule has 2 business class award seats available.
For Wow Air Airbus’ long range narrowbodies are a key tool as well. They’ve just announced 4 dots to their own route map with Airbus A321 aircraft.
Everyone except Buffalo gets a transatlantic flight. Cincinnati will have more than one airline flying to Iceland with onward connections.
Even as air travel in the U.S. has grown 30% since 2000, flying under 500 miles has declined by about 30%. That’s a shocking figure.
One major factor seems to be the increased hassle of flying over the last 17 years.
The business model of US airlines is broken. That may sound strange since US airlines made nearly $8 billion in the first half of 2017. But they’re stagnating. They aren’t earning their profit by innovating or delivering more value to customers. And profits are down substantially from two years ago.
A week ago air berlin filed for Germany’s version of bankruptcy. The carrier has been in trouble for some time, has lost billions of dollars, and their patron Etihad has turned off the spigot.
Germany itself stepped in with a loan guarantee to keep the airline afloat while they figure out options. Most likely that involves selling off pieces of the airline, rather than finding an investor for the whole oneworld airline. Now things are getting really bad.
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.
American Airlines became the first US airline with an international premium economy product last October when it brought its first Boeing 787-9 into the fleet.
American has beaten their September-projected start for beginning the Airbus A330 project, with the first one — tail number N279AY — having been flown from Philadelphia to Paine Field today.
I absolutely love the introduction of premium economy as a product. Eventually I expect it not to be great for upgrades (that in the future upgrades will be from coach to premium economy, and not to business class). And I absolutely love American’s direct aisle access seats, especially the new Super Diamond seats which are the best seats I’ve flown in business class.
The Boeing 777-200s are interesting because they run the gamut and tell a story of the evolution of American’s thinking over the past half dozen years.
We now know a lot more about the airline bomb plot that was foiled in Sydney. The plan was to blow up an Etihad Sydney – Abu Dhabi flight. As usual much of the initial reporting was wrong.
The story at the beginning was that the bomb was hidden inside a meat grinder in a passenger’s luggage, but as luck would have it the bag was too heavy and didn’t get checked. Now that story has changed, and the bomb was supposedly hidden inside a large barbie doll.
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 »
