American Airlines Becomes More Flexible Rebooking Passengers On Other Airlines During Delays

by Gary Leff

british tail plane
May 16 2022

When things go wrong with an airline’s operation most carriers have “interline agreements” that let them put their passengers on another airline’s flights. However in 2018 American Airlines decided it was too expensive to put passengers on other airlines when they cancelled their own flights.

There’s an ability for American Airlines agents to make exceptions to this policy, and these are important for passengers without status flying coach to know about and ask for.

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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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