Three years ago American was talking about “Going for Great.” That’s still in the safety video but otherwise it isn’t something we’ve heard about from American Airlines in quite some time.
There was no new slogan articulating a broad vision for the company offered this year in its place – just lots of small piece of information learned.
Ever since United went revenue-based, awarding miles based on the cost of ticket rather than distance-flown, you could still earn 1 mile per mile flown by crediting most United fares to a Singapore KrisFlyer account.
That just changed.
South America’s LATAM, the combination of LAN and TAM, is moving their LATAM Pass frequent flyer program from kilometers to miles effective January 3.
Somehow this is supposed to “make your experience with us even better” by converting everything from kilometers to miles at a ratio of 1.6 to 1.
Last month I wrote about getting unlimited inflight wireless internet on planes equipped with either Gogo or Panasonic from $6 per month which is a whole lot cheaper than my $50 Gogo unlimited plan that works on American Airlines only.
That deal is deal but here’s one that in several ways is even better.
Recently there have been calls for Marriott to abrogate a meeting contract with a group that the Southern Povery Law Center calls an anti-Muslim hate organization. (Let’s leave aside that the Southern Poverty Law Center considers a wide range of organizations hate groups, not just what most people think the phrase means.)
While Marriott is a private business and chooses with whom to book meetings, Marriott’s CEO Arne Sorenson says they shouldn’t be in the business of vetting the messages of each group that books a meeting.
American Airlines is introducing 30 inch pitch coach seating — that’s the distance from seat back to seat back — on their new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, and they’ll be retrofitting their existing 737s to match so they can squeeze more seats onto the aircraft.
They argue the seats will give passengers as much personal space as they have today, even though seats are closer together. And they displayed the seats publicly for the first time today.
I’m not sure I’ve ever made a redemption with a value of 40 cents per point before.
There’s a hotel I wanted to stay at in about 3 weeks where the lowest cancellable rate is $450 a night. This trick brought it down to $250 per night for 2 nights.
American will be introducing Casper mattress pads, duvets, pillots, blankets, lumbar pillows, pajamas and slippers.
New comfort amenities aren’t limited to long haul international. They’ll be introduced to premium transcon business and first class routes and also premium economy as well.
The Boeing 747 went into commercial service in 1970. It was a bet the company move for Boeing in collaboration with Pan Am. The plane became known as the ‘Queen of the Sky’ and there’s still something magical about climbing the staircase to its upper deck.
United’s 747s have a storied history. After other US airlines retired the bird that’s too costly to fly in many cases unless close to full, and that’s no longer the biggest jetliner in the world at a time when the trend is to buy smaller planes and fly point-to-point or offer more frequencies, United continued to fly the aircraft.
Gulf air was de-emphasizing its Abu Dhabi hub an the ruling family there decided to start its own airline. They hired James Hogan to run it. Hogan had been the CEO of Gulf Air. So his airline strategy secured himself a new job.
He built a major Gulf player, but also a loss-maker — while the airline certainly invested in passenger experience, its the carrier’s investments in airlines around the world that drove red ink and ultimately led to his departure.
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 »
