Southwest Airlines announced plans for redeye flights, premium seats, and assigned seating but left a lot of questions unanswered.
They don’t know all the answers yet! But during the carrier’s second quarter investor call on Thursday they provided more information and filled in several gaps, as well as shared other useful tidbits, that flyers need to know about these changes and the airline’s business.
Hyatt has added Under Canvas glamping through its Mr and Mrs Smith partnership. There are 13 outdoor resorts in places like Yellowstone National Park and the Great Smoky Mountains.
They need to take care not to lose the value proposition that does still distinguish them, and for which the market continues to value their business at a higher multiple than competitors, even as they work to provide a product that more people want to buy and to pay more for. But they also need to address their inability to sell small town and long haul flights through partners in order to continue to grow.
American Airlines profit was down in the second quarter. They’re crowing about record revenue, a lot of that is inflation, and they’re clearly not doing well – profit forecasts were revised downward significantly, and they are now saying they won’t earn anything in the third quarter which is traditionally good. It isn’t winter!
In fact, American Airlines will make money on its co-brand credit cards during the third quarter. That means it will lose money flying airplanes over the summer months. That’s insane.
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Air Canada Aeroplan now partners with Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings, adding connecting opportunities for award travel throughout Europe, the Mideast and North Africa.
They’re expected to offer extra legroom seats at the front of the cabin, in what’s being referred to as Love Cabin. These seats would be assigned. Southwest could offer blocked middle seats for sale in Love Cabin, along the lines of Frontier, where the airline sells a seat block to both the aisle and middle seat passenger as an option. And they’re preparing to increase fleet utilization – cheaper additional flying using current aircraft – by offering redeye flights for the first time. New union contracts now provide for redeye operations, and the airline no longer has to turn their systems off and on in a reset each night which required operations to halt.
Delta absolutely melted down, and while employees and customers were dealing with the aftermath their CEO took off for Paris.
United’s CEO appears to have gone on vacation, too. Scott Kirby told employees and customers that he and his family were traveling through the worst of the cancellations this past Saturday.
Delta Air Lines is getting approbation for its about-face, finally now being willing reimburse customers who had to buy airline tickets on other carriers while they’ve cancelled well over 5,000 flights the past few days.
Through August 22, Southwest Airlines is offering to sell elite status. They will sell you the qualifying points you need to earn elite benefits through December 31, 2025.
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 »
