Apr 07 2016

United’s Jeff Smisek, Delta’s Richard Anderson, and American’s Doug Parker started crowing a little over a year ago about having to compete against Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar – that it was unfair these Gulf carriers got subsidies and they didn’t.

While it became clear that the case made against the Gulf carriers was itself a fraud (which isn’t to say there haven’t been subsidies), that the US airlines have themselves been massively subsidized, and that it was a case of selective outrage (not complaining about other state-subsidized partners, including ones part-owned by US airlines), the cry over the Big 3 Gulf carriers somewhat subsided.

Except, oddly, from Doug Parker..

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Apr 07 2016

The founders of L’Avion, all business class airline to Paris, were hemorrhaging but managed to luck into a deal to sell to British Airways (the airline is now OpenSkies). Not content to have gotten out ahead, these same people started all over with La Compagnie.

Richard Branson seems to say he wants to pull the trick. He says he won’t let Virgin America die.

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Apr 07 2016

Earlier in the week I wrote that an Air India pilot refused to show up for one of the airline’s inaugural flights because he wanted to fly to Delhi instead.

Now comes word that an Air India pilot delayed a flight to the Maldives for 2.5 hours because he was insisting that the airline schedule a particular female co-pilot to fly with him.

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Apr 06 2016

Alaska Airlines beat out JetBlue to buy Virgin America. That means JetBlue won’t build a big California presence out of Virgin’s San Francisco hub and Los Angeles operation.

But JetBlue still wants new customers in California, and in their home state of New York. They want Virgins.

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Apr 06 2016

One of my all-time favorite songs is Roxy Music’s 1982 single ‘More Than This’ from their albom Avalon (it was covered by 10,000 Maniacs in 1997). I loved it as a kid, and am even more emotionally tied to it because of Bill Murray’s karaoke rendition in Lost in Translation.

Roxy Music’s Brian Eno recorded perhaps the greatest muzak ever, Music for Airports, in 1978.

Chris Holbrook asks in the New York Times why airports are ‘designed for everyone but the passenger’ and laments that many architects have forgotten the “obligation to please the people who use their space.” Holbrook begins by recounting the story of Brian Eno caring about the experience for people inside the airport, which airports often pay only lip service to. But it’s not at all surprising why this is.

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Apr 06 2016

There’s no magic bullet day of week to book, but there are general rules for how far in advance to book. Know what tickets usually cost for your route. Learn airfare routing rules and how to search for discount inventory, and then piece together actual flights that have the lowest inventory buckets available. Buy one seat at a time even if you’re traveling as a pair.

Here’s what you need to know.

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Apr 06 2016

United is celebrating 90 years today.

United is highlighting their ‘firsts in aviation’ to mark this milestone. It hasn’t always been all sunshine and unicorns, but I’m flying United more and more (again in a few days), though I don’t expect to earn status with them.

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Apr 06 2016

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.

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Apr 06 2016

Virgin America’s CEO sent a note to employees about being bought out by Alaska Airlines for $2.6 billion.

Most Virgin America employees will keep their jobs for the foreseeable future. Alaska Airlines doesn’t serve many of the cities that Virgin does. Alaska doesn’t have enough flight attendants and pilots to maintain Virgin’s operation without Virgin’s employees. Alaska’s pilots generally aren’t currently rated on Airbus equipment. Alaska’s mechanics aren’t either. And the Airbus equipment stays, at least for awhile.

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Apr 06 2016

Many of you know that I offer an award booking service. It grew too big to handle on my own, and I was fortunate enough to be able to partner with one of the real veterans and gurus in the frequent flyer game, Steve Belkin (known in online forums as ‘beaubo’).

Steve is most famous for exploiting loopholes in frequent flyer programs like Aeroplan and United’s MileagePlus in a truly big way, scaling opportunities to earn millions instead of thousands of miles. And in that pursuit he has hired disable Thai rice farmers to fly in and out of the Golden Triangle area of Thailand, and New Zealand college students to fly to Europe for the summer.

One of the really fun projects he’s had is called Competitours. Every summer, Steve disappears from work to run what the Chicago Tribune calls “The Amazing Race for Regular People.”

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