Speaking to employees this week at a Crew News forum, American Airlines CEO Doug Parker shared that he wasn’t in the loop on the decision to cut meals from inflight service. Cuts are being made across the company faster than ever before.
Flight attendants at American Airlines are submitting “a couple dozen” reports per day on passengers refusing to wear masks, according to Senior Vice President of Flight Services Jill Surdek at a question and answer session with flight attendants this past week, a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing.
Corporate security reviews each report and it’s a “super easy decision” to ban the passenger after they’ve been reported “multiple times.”
A RAND Corporation study looks at travel patterns to estimate “China’s reported COVID-19 caseload was undercounted by a factor of nearly 40.”
In fact based on outbound air passenger numbers, to have just an even (50/50) chance of COVID spreading to Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and the United States – as it had by January 22 – you’d need an infection rate 37 times greater than China officially reports.
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American Airlines CEO Doug Parker told employees this week that his airline will soon copy others (such as United) that are requiring passengers to complete health screening questions as part of the check-in process, to keep people with COVID-19 off of planes.
Doug Parker has shared with unions this week that American Airlines expects to be a 10%-20% smaller airline in summer 2021 than before the coronavirus pandemic. In the fall they’ll have 20% – 30% too many people on staff, and they’ll have to reduce the flight attendant work group based on that number – while retaining pilots based on where they plan to be by mid-2021.
Before the global pandemic, Apple was United’s largest corporate customer spending $150 million with the airline. Unsurprisingly United’s San Francisco hub captures a large amount of Northern California tech business, and Apple is one of the biggest spenders on travel.
With significant suppliers and manufacturing in China, Apple had been booking one quarter of total company spend on just the San Francisco – Shanghai route, a total of 50 business class seats a day.
Temperature checks are health security theater. It’s one thing for airlines to require it themselves, another thing to make it an extra-legal government mandate that’s hard to turn back.
The solution is to make it easier for passengers who get sick not to fly, not to make passengers show up sick and infect others in order to get a refund.
Southwest, Delta, and JetBlue are limiting the number of seats they sell on each flight so there’s no need for passengers to occupy middle seats. Sometimes middle seats will be taken, but that usually means families traveling together. American Airlines has been limiting loads about half as much as others – but that ends July 1.
United Airlines, in contrast, has been happy to sell a ticket for any seat on any flight and fill all the middles throughout the COVID crisis. Starting July 1 even more of those middle seats will be filled.
Southwest, Delta, and JetBlue are limiting the number of seats they sell on each flight so there’s no need for passengers to occupy middle seats.
American Airlines does not. They cap capacity, but still sell enough seats so about half of middles might be occupied. American’s much lesser restriction will end July 1.
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 »
