American Airlines pilots, as a group, aren’t happy. Their union advises people not to come work for the airline. Usually unions want.. more members, not fewer.
In Los Angeles, though, their pilots have a special beef: they don’t get to fly as many places as they used to. In particular, widebody pilots have almost nowhere to go.
I understand that some people aren’t familiar with Western customs, and should perhaps be forgiven for that, like the gentleman I once saw at the breakfast buffet at a Westin in his bathrobe (and nothing else).
However there’s a place where I think we have to draw a line and reject cultural relativism. Here it is.
American is blaming an inability for crew to even get in touch with the airline on weather when this has happened before and when they’ve promised to fix it so it does not happen again before.
American promised to improve on this a year ago. They didn’t. They said hotel booking desks would get staffed up – both more staff at their outsourced vendor, and also augmenting that with American Airlines staff as well. Now they’ve outlined a four-step plan to avoid crew getting stuck sleeping in airports again.
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.
Before the pandemic one of the American Airlines breakfasts on regional jets was a smoked salmon plate. American’s regional jets don’t have ovens in the galleys so it was a perfect meal to serve cold. I always thought that it was a better choice than an egg dish with sausage on mainline.
In the fall I had a smoked salmon plate on my Los Angeles – Honolulu flight. I was thrilled at the choice, but there was no tomato and I was given a miniature bagel. I’ve often criticized American Airlines for failing to pay attention to the details. On this flight they’d really figured it out.
As you can see from this chart, only Hyatt Ziva Puerto Vallarta has changed pricing, going from 20,000 points per night to 25,000 points per night. Hyatt tells me, though, that Hyatt Ziva Puerto Vallarta will be moving to Category B at 20,000 points in the next week.
I have to give Hyatt a lot of credit here. My first instinct is to wonder whether assigning existing all-inclusives to a new award chart would be an opportunity to raise the price of redemptions. Surely at most programs it would be! And they have not done this here.
There’s a lot of words in hospitality that people get wrong all the time. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people refer to American A-Advantage, or A-Mex. But it never occurred to me that I’ve been pronouncing Marriott wrong for the last 20 years or longer.
American Airlines stopped catering the espresso machines on board their Boeing 777, Boeing 787, and Airbus A321T aircraft during the pandemic. The “frothing wands, cups, saucers, brewing pods” were taken off of planes, according to the airline. Fortunately espresso drinks are back!
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.
The Justice Department’s case against American-JetBlue was weak. A Spirit acquisition could make it stronger. But it’s still not a slam dunk. The Justice Department might say to JetBlue ‘drop the American Airlines alliance as a condition of our approval of the Spirit acquisition.’
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 »
