Major airlines today seem more worried that some member, somewhere might actually benefit from a promotion than they seem to care the promotion actually incentivizing customer behavior.
American Airlines has had catering issues they’ve blamed on pandemic unemployment and other supply chain disruptions. Their goal now, according to the airline’s managing director of onboard dining, is to have “at the very minimum enough water to go to everyone.”
With Australia reducing the number of international passengers allowed to enter the country each day in half, American is running many of its Los Angeles – Sydney flights as cargo-only until August 31, while the return Sydney – Los Angeles flight carriers both cargo and passengers. On days where American has an allocation of allowed passenger arrivals, they’re carrying passengers to Australia.
After this period American Airlines will exit the Australian passenger market for two months, although of course this suspension of service could be extended based on facts on the ground in Australia.
My award booking service partner Steve Belkin, author of a new book on his 30 years of mileage exploits, has another project that’s launched.
He is launching Scuba Hunt in Cozumel this month.
American Airlines customers, especially, should like flying JetBlue which offers more legroom, seat back entertainment, free wifi and a business class product (on routes where it’s offered) with relatively great seats, food, and friendly service.
However the actual partnership – as experienced by passengers – is quite broken. Several customers, based in both Boston and New York, have shared the problems they’ve faced.
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.
Travelers are banned from entering the U.S. if in the prior 14 days they’ve been in China, Iran, the European Schengen area, U.K. and Ireland, Brazil, South Africa or India. That’s true even though the U.S. requires testing of everyone entering by air; if the traveler has had a full course of an mRNA vaccine; and is coming from a place with far less Covid-19 than the U.S.
This makes no sense. Americans can go to Europe and they can return – in some cases even if they’re unvaccinated. But vaccinated Europeans can’t fly to the U.S. And this is somehow for our protection?
Everyone knew that 2021 would be an odd year. It might not be a total loss, like 2020, where American like most everyone else just extended status. However business travel hadn’t returned in the first half of the year in a meaningful way, and much of long haul international travel remained out of reach. Customers who normally made their status on international business class tickets just weren’t doing so, yet no one wanted to lose these customers when their business returned.
With how easy they’ve made it to keep status, the airline now needs to encourage people to actually fly the airline.
R&B singer Lyfe Jennings flew American Airlines and recorded his last interaction with the airline as he boarded his flight, being asked whether there would be any issues on the flight – whether he was going to be a troublemaker – after, he says, he was continually questioned over boarding as a first class passenger. He believes the airline’s employees were skeptical that he belonged in first class because he’s black.
Two quick stories about customer focus help me put in context a conversation that’s been happening on LinkedIn among airline executives.
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 »
