Southwest Airlines didn’t exactly surrender to Elliot Management, but they agreed to put 5 Elliot nominees on a 13-member board of directors in exchange for their dropping the petition for a special meeting of the board.
Already, the airline has given Elliot much of what they were asking for. The activist investor spurred movement on assigned seating, premium seating, partnerships, and redeye flying which are things Southwest had moved very slowly on.
Probably the most misunderstood thing in all of aviation is speed tape. Passengers see what looks like ‘duct tape’ on their plane, and they worry whether it will hold together. The plane doesn’t look safe and first impressions over safety matter right now with aviation safety top of mind given the issues we’ve seen with the Boeing 737 MAX 9 door plug, air traffic control mishaps, and pilot error over the past couple of years.
Ultimately they should see some mean reversion in corporate bookings, but they’re unlikely to become a leader. They don’t have a strategy to better than today in key markets like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. They don’t have a strategy to get customers to pay more to fly American than competitors – which will become even more crucial with their higher costs, and as the supply of premium seats grows. AI and cost-cutting alone is not a vision.
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.
I’m not certain that bidding for a driver is a tip, exactly, since tips does not actually stand for ‘to insure prompt service’. But it’s just another way that Uber has lost the plot since picking Expedia’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to run the business.
Last year, Star Alliance member TAP Air Portugal launched a U.S. credit card with Cardless. At the time, they had a 60,000 point initial bonus offer, but that dropped down to 30,000 points after the initial push for cardmembers.
Now they’re back with a strong acquisition offer: 58,000 bonus miles That’s an odd number, right?
There are plenty of people who think modern air travel is inhumane. Today’s coach cabin isn’t fit for people. One man says Alaska Airlines economy is worse than that: it killed his dog.
My former award booking partner Steve (some of you know him as “beaubo” on Flyertalk) literally wrote the book on 30 years of leveraging the biggest miles and points exploits.
One lesson he always reminds me is that if it’s a good deal, you should think about how it might scale.
Here are the 100 busiest airline routes without non-stop service today, and what passengers are paying to connect for each one.
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.
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 »
