Airline frequent flyer programs have bigger credit card deals than ever before. Each of Delta, American, and United are bringing in over $2 billion a year from their cards. And their frequent flyer programs earn better than 50% margins.
However the future isn’t all that bright. Stifel analyst Joe DeNardi has suggested airline stocks could be worth double their values if only the market realized how great these frequent flyer programs are.
Airlines earnings calls are often fascinating. You’d expect airlines to say as little as possible in public, even in respoinse to analyst and journalist questions, but I still love to listen because executives will drop wisdom and share how they’re thinking broadly.
Scott Kirby has always been one of the best (and most infuriating as a customer) to listen to. United’s 2nd quarter earnings call this morning was no exception.
Offloading everyone — not just the passengers an airline wants to kick off — causes more of a delay. It’s more of an inconvenience for other passengers and more costly to the airline. But when everyone’s getting off, the passengers you want to offload generally do to. And they do without physical violence.
Priority Pass has had several lounges at Paris Charles de Gaulle but the various concourses aren’t connected past security, and you can’t simply enter a concourse that’s not the one you’ll be departing from.
A gaping hole in the Priority Pass network in this major European hub has been lounge access for transatlantic passengers flying the airport’s main tenant Air France.
As a general matter announcing you’ve broken the law on social media, and providing photographic evidence, is inadvisable. Returning to the scene of the crime afterward? Even less so.
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Brand new planes — Boeing 787s and Boeing 737s — are expensive. Ramping up quickly; attracting, hiring, training new crew; setting up new stations and new hubs even; generating consumer awareness are all expensive.
So it’s not surprising to see the Wall Street Journal covering challenges at Norwegian “You Can’t Build a Low Cost Airline Without Low Costs.
Here are the number of each family of planes that Boeing is building each month, their order backlog, and the average retail price of each plane type… and what those retail prices actually mean.
Delta moved Ann Coulter out of the seat she selected and paid for on a Delta flight from New York to Florida. Coulter went on a tweetstorm.
I’ve never been a fan of Ann Coulter. She was disserviced. She was less than charitable in suffering that. Still relative outrage belongs focused on Delta, and it would be if Ann Coulter wasn’t otherwise such a polarizing figure offensive to many.
American Airlines Chairman and CEO Doug Parker needs to get the memo that Delta is not his friend and that American’s interests aren’t the same as Delta’s.
In going along with Delta’s interests, copying Delta’s strategies, Parker is being played for the Greater Fool. But not the good kind Olivia Munn talks about.
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 »
