On Tuesday United Airlines teased new international long haul routes and this morning the airline briefed media about their plans. The airline made media promise not to place guesses on their social posts after the briefing. Now they have a new social post with the reveal.
It’s clearly time that Europeans should be allowed to enter the U.S. There’s no good virus-related reason to keep them out. But what about letting American’s visit Europe? The European Commission is recommending new guidelines for save travel, and the U.S. is on its way towards meeting their criteria.
A formal Department of Transportation complaint has been filed (.pdf) against American Airlines over the removal of their general tariff from their website in June.
American used to have its full ‘terms and conditions’ available online. They’ve removed the legalese entirely from their website and now offer a plain language FAQ-style conditions of carriage page. However there’s still a general tariff, and customers effectively agree to it when they buy a ticket. They just can’t see it or read it.
At 10 a.m. Central time (11 a.m. Eastern) on Wednesday United is making a big route announcement, and they’re dropping hints – they say there are 30 clues – in a video posted to social media.
Here’s the video, and some of the hints they’re dropping. There’ll almost certainly be new transatlantic service from Washington Dulles, Newark, and Chicago. A Boeing 767-300ER is involved. And there’s a new ultra-long haul route with a Boeing 787-9, could United actually fly to Bangkok?
A man pled guilty today and is expected to get probation after scamming American Airlines out of $160,000 in tickets paid for with gift cards.
Billy Schwarze booked travel for friends and family. He bought gift cards to pay for the tickets, and then refunded the tickets – to his own credit card. This cost American $160,000 “and his friends and associates..$20,000.”
When calculating the cost of ‘jobs saved’ for six months via a ‘clean extension’ of CARES Act payroll support, we were looking at a cost of $333,333 per job since most of the money goes to fund payroll that airlines will have whether a bill passes or not. In other words it funds $200,000+ a year pilots and it funds the salaries of executive management, having taxpayers pick up the tab rather than shareholders and creditors.
Now though against actual announced furloughs we’re looking at a cost of about $625,000 per job saved – and many of those will just mean job losses six months down the road.
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.
A passenger on an easyJet flight from Manchester to Tenerife used what some might call the Ted Cruz exception, milking a single food or beverage item for the full flight to take advantage of airline rules allowing passengers to go maskless while eating or drinking.
He says he doesn’t actually have an issue with masks, it was just an experiment to see if he could get away with it: he bought a can of Pringles potato chips on the flight, and spread 100 chips out across the length of the flight, making each chip last two and a half minutes.
Ironically, the airline says “[t]he passenger was removed for repeatedly disrupting the pre-flight safety briefing which includes reiteration of our inflight face-covering policy.”
On this delayed flight to Phoenix someone was airdropping porn from their iPhone. A flight attendant made an announcement telling parents to make sure kids with iphones have their bluetooth turned off, and that their setting won’t allow receiving files from people not on their contact list.
Airlines have delay codes for weather, mechanical, crew availability and a host of other reasons. This may be the first flight, however, that was delayed by porn.
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 »
