A 75 year old woman with terminal lung disease was heading to Seattle on Alaska Airlines – but was kicked off of her flight at the Fairbanks, Alaska airport over face mask rules.
She wore an N95 mask and a face shield during boarding. But once she settled into her seat she replaced those with a respirator helmet.
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 piece opens with new American Airlines frequent flyer head Rick Elieson, who moves over from cargo, explaining how loyalty and cargo aren’t that different than you’d think and the joke almost writes itself about AAdvantage members being self-loading cargo.
Elieson does confirm that award charts aren’t going away, that he’s working to get more saver award inventory, and that he’s open to considering a family pooling benefit.
There’s been no known cases of Covid-19 transmission on US airlines. Sure US contact tracing isn’t very good. But even internationally and across the whole world there are only a few flights where spread is believed to have occurred despite around a billion people traveling so far this year.
Hotels too seem to be safe. There haven’t been documented cases of spread between rooms either in hotels or office buildings.
American Airlines, like other major carriers, cut first class meal service early in the pandemic and largely eliminated drink service from coach. American brought back coach buy on board as first class food, and has always offered at least drinks on request up front. However on most domestic flights there’s still not a formal drink service.
That appears to be about to change, though apparently some flight attendants aren’t happy about it.
American Airlines now offers pre-flight rapid Covid-19 tests for passengers flying from Dallas Fort-Worth to both Honolulu and Maui. This allows passengers testing negative to skip quarantine on arrival.
But what happens if you test positive at the airport? American Airlines put out an internal memo on Wednesday explaining.
After bringing American Airlines to its operational knees last summer, the airline’s mechanics won a generous contract right before the pandemic hit – a deal they would never get today.
Nonetheless AMFA, the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, has been trying to ‘raid’ American Airlines and seek to take away representation of the mechanics.
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.
This is an exceptionally interesting development, if true, both for the recovery in travel but also beyond that for understanding how the U.S. is responding to the Covid-19 epidemic as it progresses.
During Thursday morning’s United Airlines third quarter earnings call, airline CEO Scott Kirby reiterated his view that we won’t see full recovery of air travel until there’s a widely available vaccine, which he anticipates in the second half of 2021. However the airline also said that there appears to be a decoupling of travel bookings from the course of the virus.
While the FAA hasn’t signed off on the plane yet, Europe’s safety regulator has gone ahead and publicly stated it is approving it first. That’s huge.
Given the embarrassment of the FAA over the past year and a half over how the MAX was initially approved, and their resulting decline in international prestige, it’s important for world acceptance that the FAA isn’t the only one approving the plane. It’s an even bigger deal that they aren’t even first to say they’ll do so.
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 »
