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.
Yesterday I was in New York and supposed to fly home on American’s 5:15pm New York JFK – Austin flight. I decided I really didn’t want to wind up in coach for the Westbound flight which runs about 4 hours, so I plunked down a Business ExtrAA one-segment upgrade when only 2 first class seats were left for sale a few weeks out.
The thing about paper upgrade certificates though is that they have to be turned in at the airport. You cannot check-in online or using American’s mobile app.
I had checked traffic and it was looking like almost an hour to JFK. I fired up my phone and grabbed an Uber at 2:50pm. I was in the car at 3pm. Waze said I’d be at the airport by 3:50pm. That all changed as we approached the Midtown tunnel. There was an accident just as we were entering, and traffic stopped.
American Airlines had apparently feared losing their fuel tax exemptions in North Carolina which amount to big government breaks on the cost of fuel there. The North Carolina House passed its budget without touching American’s tax subsidies. The state Senate has yet to take up the budget.
But wait. I’m confused. American Airlines CEO Doug Parker says it’s unfair that he has to compete with big Middle East airlines which he claims are the ones getting government subsidies.
Dave Carruthers was supposed to fly American Airlines flight AA211 from Manchester, UK to New York JFK but the flight was cancelled for mechanical reasons.
It’s not clear from his complaint what happened next. He says he spent ~ US$2000 to get to London Heathrow and fly to New York to make business meetings, which sounds like he wasn’t just put on an American (or British Airways) London – New York flight. Mr. Carruthers’ bags weren’t promptly sent to New York.
American Airlines President Scott Kirby spoke at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2016 Transportation Conference this morning.
The single biggest area of interest among institutional investors, and naturally the very first question Kirby got, was about revenue per available seat mile. Ticket prices are falling. The airline is hugely profitable thanks to low fuel prices, but profits have gone up even as revenue has fallen. Interestingly many of the items he focuses on to drive revenue are about the AAdvantage program.
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.
Southwest Airlines introduced ‘Rapid Rewards 2.0’ — their revenue-based program — in 2011. After just two and a half years they devalued their points about 15%, reducing the maximum value you can get out of a point to 1.43 cents.
Then a mere year later they devalued again by introducing a sliding scale of value — sometimes you’d still get 1.43 cents a point in value on their cheapest fares, but sometimes you’d get less. That change went into effect April 17, 2015 after two months’ notice.
Now, a year later, they appear to have devalued again and this time they did it without any notice at all.
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 President Scott Kirby spoke today at the Bank of America Transportation Conference and indicated that ‘premium economy’ would be coming to the domestic fleet in 2017.
‘Premium economy’ domestically sounds to me something akin to what Delta has done with their extra legroom product. American offers Main Cabin Extra which is just extra legroom seating. Delta bundles their extra legroom with free drinks and snacks (depending on flight length).
As of yesterday’s flights it’s a separate fare class that passengers get upgraded into on the basis of their elite status.
A passenger once left something in a British Airways lavatory so horrible the plane had to turn around and go back to Heathrow.
On the other end of the spectrum, a different passenger once left 24 gold bars in the lavatory of a Jet Airways flight. They were found when the aircraft was being cleaned in Kolkata. And it proved to the world that Jet Airways does, in fact, clean their lavatories.
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 »
