With U.S. airlines eliminating change fees on domestic trips (excluding basic economy fares), will that least to more cancellations? And will higher cancellation rates mean that airlines need to overbook flights more than before?
If more people can change plans without penalty, will we have more people changing plans – so more people not taking the seats they’ve booked? Will that mean airlines need to sell even more seats for each flight to make up for it?
American Airlines announced they were going to stop serving 15 cities once government payroll subsidies ran out, and they were no longer required to fly to all of their pre-existing markets.
They’ve backtracked on several of those changes. The latest is Stillwater, Oklahoma where the airport put out a press release basically announcing that their Senators traded political support for air service.
Airlines generally have specially picked cabin crew for public relations and VIP events. These flights aren’t assigned by seniority at many airlines.
Coronavirus hit Iran early and hard, and the virus has continued to rage there. Two months ago Iran estimated they’d had 25 million Covid-19 cases, despite still having fewer than half a million cases lab-confirmed.
Unsurprisingly there’s been little demand for air travel. The nation’s flag carrier Iran Air is auctioning off 12 of its planes, a veritable grab bag of aviation history.
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.
Business travelers are suffering now, without being able to pad their incomes with fraudulent expense reports. The travel industry as a whole is suffering more. Travel agents aren’t selling very much travel.
Hopefully none will resort to the sort of temptation that Cheryl Ethan Travel Services is accused of.
It’s not just passengers refusing to wear personal protection equipment that’s a problem at the airline. It seems another problem is passengers who wear too much. So last week American Airlines sent a memo to its customer care agents on “Prohibited Personal Protection Equipment (PPE).”
On Wednesday American Airlines gave instructions to all of its phone representatives on how to handle complaints related to the airline’s allowing crewmembers to wear Black Lives Matter pins on their uniforms.
This month Delta Air Lines is rolling out anti-microbial bins at security checkpoints in their terminals at Atlanta, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Los Angeles, New York-LaGuardia and New York-JFK.
TSA screening bins have more germs than the monkey in outbreak. Your fellow sick passengers touch the bins, they even put their dirty tissues and handkerchiefs in them before going through the nude-o-scope pockets empty.
On board and inflight is one of the safest indoor environments from a Covid-19 transmission perspective. But that doesn’t mean that travel is safe. Most planes (but not smaller regional jets and turboprops) have HEPA air filtration that’s highly protective.
That doesn’t mean the virus doesn’t spread. Often when this and other viruses are attributed to flights it’s likely spreading at airport security, in the gate area, or on the jet bridge. These are places where passengers congregate closely together and where the air isn’t filtered as well.
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 »
