JetBlue Makes Hostile Bid For Spirit Airlines, Attacks Spirit Board

by Gary Leff

May 16 2022

JetBlue wants Spirit Airlines shareholders to vote against merging with Frontier Airlines. They’ve reiterated their offer of more money to buy Spirit. They’ve reduced their offer from $33 to $30 per share but are dangling an additional 10% – back up to $33 per share in cash – subject to negotiation and due diligence.

JetBlue’s offer is for substantially more money. It does not provide greater certainty, as they claim, though. There is more regulatory risk though it’s difficult to evaluate exactly how much. There should be a path to solve this though through negotiation if JetBlue is as confident in closing the transaction as they claim: a higher breakup fee.

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Head Of Delta SkyMiles Explains Why They Charge So Much More For Awards Than Other Airlines

by Gary Leff

The inimitable Brian Sumers interviewed the Vice President of the Delta SkyMiles program for Skift and put the question to Prashant Sharma why does Delta charge so many more miles for the best awards than other airlines?

And Sharma’s answer is pretty simple: it’s because they can get away with it, and customers keep earning SkyMiles and signing up for the Delta credit card.

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American Telling Gate Agents Not To Remove Passengers From Flight To Accommodate Late Standbys

by Gary Leff

airline cabin
May 15 2022

Standbys are being cleared earlier automatically and upgrades are now being cleared earlier by the ‘Agent Assist’ program which was developed to make work at the boarding gate easier, support single agent boarding, and still allow a flight to go off on time.

But with standbys and upgrades happening earlier, more customers are showing up at the gate asking to get on board after most seats have already been given away.

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New York Airports Promise Lower Priced Beer, Refunds For Overcharged Passengers

by Gary Leff

May 15 2022

Last summer a customer on Twitter revealed that airport concessions operator OTG charging $28 plus tax and tip for beer at Newark airport. This clearly violated their lease to abide by ‘street pricing’ rules.

OTG, famous for making you order everything via an iPad, quickly claimed the pricing was a mistake, corrected it, but still argued that it really wasn’t such a bad deal after all because it was a big pour ($28 beer was better value than they’re being given credit for). Several members of Congress sprung into action.

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Covid Tests For Travel To U.S. Could End By Summer

by Gary Leff

May 14 2022

There’s an argument for slowing down spread when you’re on the cusp on prophylactics and treatments, or when hospital capacity is overwhelmed. Neither is the case today, so while a test prior to travel reduces the likelihood a given individual is infectious at time of flight it doesn’t have a material affect on the broader public health situation. And we don’t require testing prior to domestic travel, or for large gatherings.

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Computers Now Tell American Airlines Agents When Passenger Bags Must Be Gate Checked

by Gary Leff

register
May 14 2022

The only positive part of the American Airlines project to cram more seats into its domestic aircraft is that they’ve also added bigger overhead bins – big enough that each passenger should be able to bring one regulation-sized carry on bag onto the plane and stow it in the overhead.

Yet American Airlines still tells agents to make customers gate check bags on planes with these bigger bins.

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