American and JetBlue announced new flights and are now codesharing out of New York and Boston. But there’s more to the story than has been reported, based on internal documents reviewed by View From The Wing.
Here are details on which routes are open for codesharing, some restrictions involved, and what mileage-earning is possible so far – as well as customer service plans for itineraries involving flights on both airlines.
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.
I’m going to argue this isn’t a mistake fare, but you can currently fly roundtrip business class to Brazil from $470 roundtrip. Routings to Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are on American Airlines, with São Paulo about $50 more.
If you want to continue to other Brazilian cities for about $20 more than that, connections beyond São Paulo can be included on American’s partner Gol.
Ted Cruz flew to Cancun with his family on Wednesday. He says he was just taking accompanying his children down, but the ticket was booked to return Saturday and then changed to fly back Thursday after a rash of criticism for leaving the country while his home state found itself in the midst of a power and water meltdown during a weather event worse than anything in the state in over 30 years.
Though I’m at home in Austin with no power, I won’t focus on whether the state’s junior Senator should have left the country right now. That’s been well hashed out. For this post I’m more interested in the ways that his trip to Cancun can teach us all how to be better travelers.
This announcement is incomplete from the perspective of the customer and should be viewed as capturing some momentum rather than risking a setback after JetBlue’s pilots pushed back on the deal.
Ultimately though this deal should make American Airlines more relevant in New York, which is good for competition – creating a more formidable opponent of Delta (JFK and LaGuardia) and United (Newark).
Senator Ted Cruz left the country on Wednesday, flying United Airlines with his family to Cancun, as millions of Texans were without power during a once-in-a-generation weather event and near collapse of the state’s power grid. Many more (including me) are without water.
It looks now that he’s flown back to the U.S. – and while everyone else on the upgrade list cleared into business class, Cruz was the only passenger United left stuck in coach.
American Airlines is once again the biggest airline in the world by seats flown, retaking the title from Delta. The four largest airlines in the world by seats being flown right now are all U.S. carriers. The Chinese entrants though have all grown substantially week-over-week.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz just bailed on the state and headed for Mexico, in the midst of a tremendous crisis.
There’s not a ton that Texas Senator Ted Cruz can do to fix the problem now but it’s not a good look, bailing on Texas for a United flight out of Houston to Cancun for warmth while state utilities melt down.
Twenty six employees of Thai Airways are accused of faking their own deaths to collect a death benefit, but still going to work and continuing to collect a paycheck.
A passenger on a Los Angeles – Tokyo flight last year attacked a flight attendant who refused him a cocktail. The captain diverted the flight to Anchorage, and now the man has to pay $49,793 to cover meals and lodging for passengers and crew during the diversion.
He doesn’t have to pay the airline’s additional costs, such as fuel or labor costs, resulting from the diversion. He’ll get 5 years of probation. But he won’t go to prison because his lawyer says he has diabetes, which is a co-morbidity for Covid-19. Covid-19 is his ‘get out of jail’ card.
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 »
