For Airline Pilots, The Struggle Is Real

by Gary Leff

Jul 03 2022

Listen to pilots talk publicly, posturing in contract negotiations, it’s a grueling career that no one should want. Privately, though, many realize that being entrusted with $100 million machines and flying them around for a living is a pretty great gig. Many also build side businesses in their time off (insurance is a common one).

Picketing by pilots is a bad look, though. Pilots do not realize how they come across. They simply aren’t successful marketing themselves as the exploited worker class.

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Great Business Class Award Availability To Europe, Starting At Just 53,000 Points Roundtrip

by Gary Leff

stock airline bed
Jul 03 2022

There’s one place to look if you want to use American AAdvantage, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, or British Airways Executive Club points to Europe. (If you’re using miles from Cathay Pacific’s Asia Miles, you’ll actually pay lower fuel surcharges for those British Airways awards.) That place is Iberia which is very good about releasing two business class award seats from 6 U.S. cities when booking six months or more in advance.

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What Delta’s New ‘Parallel Reality’ Departures Board Is Really Like

by Gary Leff

Jul 02 2022

One hundred people at a time can see personalized flight information – addressed to them – on the same flight information board. That’s Delta’s first ‘parallel reality’ monitor in Detroit in partnership with Misapplied Sciences, first teased at the Computer Electronics Show in 2020 but with rollout delayed to this past week by the pandemic.

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American Airlines May Have Further Sabotaged Their Operation With One Scheduling Mistake

by Gary Leff

cockpit with pilot
Jul 02 2022

Summer travel is peak travel. American Airlines knew it had a problem without very much margin in pilots this month so they turned off the ability for some of their pilots to trade trips even when they had someone ready to take their place.

At least that’s what they meant to do. They updated the trip trade system making it possible for pilots to drop all of their trips.

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Secretary Pete Buttigieg Estimates The Value Of Miles, Strands Himself Mid-Trip

by Gary Leff

Jul 02 2022

Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he was taking a connecting flight Friday evening and the airline (which he doesn’t name) cancelled his connection, so he insisted on refunding the segment. If things happened the way he describes, he stranded himself mid-trip in a city that wasn’t his destination, and he doesn’t ell us how he wound up making it the rest of the journey.

Along the way he offers commentary on the value of frequent flyer miles, which he estimates are worth ‘between 1 and 1.5 cents apiece’ (he’s right!) and settles on a value of 1.2 cents for the particular miles he was offered.

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Emirates A380 May Have Flown 13 Hours With A Hole In Its Fuselage

by Gary Leff

Jul 02 2022

A three year old Emirates Airbus A380 from Dubai to Brisbane may have flown for 13 hours with a hole in its fuselage.

Flight EK430 took off from Dubai International Airport and that may be the point at which the aircraft received damage. However it wasn’t until approach into Brisbane that flight crew advised air traffic control that they suspected “they blew a tyre on takeoff” and asked for emergency response services to on standby as they arrived.

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