So you know things have gone too far when a pilot threatens an emergency landing over your behavior. Of course, it’s always the other person’s fault, right? A brawl involving three women erupted on a Chinese flight from to Chongqing to Hong Kong yesterday when two of them complained to a mum that her baby was making too much noise. The women, all believed to be Chinese, were warned that the pilot would be forced to turn back and make an emergency landing if they didn’t stop fighting. Naturally, “[T]he two women reclined their seats fully backwards, which aggravated things further. A scuffle ensued, with one of the women hitting on her head on the overhead locker..” There’s a video. When there are screaming kids on a plane, don’t do this. A year ago I…
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Singapore, Cathay, and Qantas First Class.. Some of the Best Meals of My Life, and a Tour of Hyatts in Bangkok, Singapore, and Sydney
I’m about to head off on another trip, which I’m somewhat ambivalent about because of how much I’ve been on the road lately. But I’ve also done vacation and I’m much happier to share that trip with you in the coming days. It was a return to cities I’ve been to many times, it was visiting with family at the back end on the other side of the world, but it was also some top notch airline products including first class on two A380s (taking an A380 to visit family for the holidays really improves holiday travel). Some great hotels, and amazing meals. Qantas, Singapore and Cathay First – Oh My! Late last year I stumbled upon two Qantas A380 first class award seats, Sydney – Los Angeles for the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.
Here’s Why Airbus Says They May Discontinue the A380
Over the summer I made the controversial claim that the Airbus A380 is a failure. Let’s just say plenty of people disagreed with me in the comments. As a passenger I like the plane. I love flying Singapore’s A380 in first class for sure, there’s nothing yet in the skies like the Emirates shower. And the Etihad Residence should top even that. In August I wrote: There are no buyers in the U.S., South America, or Africa. They’ve barely penetrated China or Japan. In 7 years Airbus has delivered only 138 planes to 11 airlines. Word is the plane is being discounted by 50% off list. While aircraft manufactures don’t really sell for list, that’s still a significant discount and early buyers generally get ‘most favored nation’ status where future discounted sales entail rebates to…
Building the Perfect First Class Ground Experience
There are several elements to the first class experience that start and end entirely outside the in-air experience. Airlines that compete at the top end have invested heavily in their ground experience alongside their inflight soft and hard products. Some of the best are: Thai Airways Lufthansa Qantas A notch below, in my view: Emirates Etihad And then: Asiana Cathay Pacific I’ll go out on a limb and claim that Qantas has the best first class lounge food. It’s nearly all cooked to order out of an open kitchen, with no buffet (though there are substantive bar snacks strategically placed throughout the lounge). Singapore’s Private Room has a good cooked-to-order menu, and a willingness to go off-menu to accommodate preferences, but I’ve found the food to be only average. Lufthansa’s Do&Co offerings are quite good…
Singapore Reverses Course, Agrees to Honor Mistake Fare
Last week I reported that Singapore Airlines was refusing to honor a business class mistake fare between Sydney and London. It wasn’t a cheap fare — about US$3000 roundtrip — but apparently intended as an economy rather than a business class fare. There are varying reports of between 400 and 900 tickets purchased. And after much criticism of the decision to tell these customers to pound sand they’ve changed their minds and will make good on the tickets. SINGAPORE Airlines (SIA) said on Monday it will allow about 400 passengers to fly business class after they purchased fares at economy-class prices in Australia following an embarrassing ticketing bungle. …About 400 passengers will fly up the front of the plane using tickets that were as much as A$5,000 (S$5,500) cheaper than they should have been. Singapore…
American Airlines: How to Get Your Two Workforces to Resent Each Other
As American and US Airways continue to merge their operations, one of the key issues is labor integration — and not just getting combined work contracts for flight attendants, pilots, and other groups, but getting the two work forces to operate as one and to be be both happy and productive. American management does realize that they need to avoid the kind of ‘us vs. them’ mentality that often pervades mergers. Legacy Continental flight attendants sometimes still announce that their United flights are operated by Continental crew. They’re proud of their heritage, think they’re better, and resent legacy United employees. So when American’s CEO says things like this, he probably isn’t helping: Mr. Parker said the most surprising thing of the past year was how many things needed improving at American once he arrived from…
How Much Are Miles Really Worth? Valuations for Each Program
What is the value of miles and points by airline, hotel and credit card program? Miles used to be thought to be worth 2 cents. I think that conventional wisdom developed out of the idea that a cross country flight cost about $500… or 25,000 miles. 20 years ago that was generally true, and award availability wasn’t really a problem either. That was long before: Airline alliances opened up huge possibilities for miles. Mileage programs increased the cost of many awards. Awards became tougher to get with flights full. Plus the 2 cent number probably wasn’t ever true to begin with. Many different folks have taken a stab at how much miles are worth. For this post I’m not going to give you a single number. I’m going to share my own rough and ready…
American Airlines (and other oneworld alliance) Elites Get New Checked Baggage Benefits
The oneworld alliance has improved its free elite checked baggage allowance and priority baggage handling. Specifically mid- and top-tier elites will get priority baggage delivery and mid-tier elites get an increased checked baggage allowance. Priority Baggage Delivery oneworld Emerald and Sapphire members — in the AAdvantage program the equivalent is Platinum and Executive Platinum; with British Airways Silver and Gold — will receive priority luggage tags when checking baggage on any oneworld alliance member. Notice I say the benefit is for priority luggage tags rather than “priority checked baggage” as oneworld advertises — because there’s huge variability across airlines in how well priority bags are delivered. It’s fair to say that the benefit will be equivalent to what’s offered to business class passengers. Whether the execution happens or not varies by airlines and airports, though…
Please Keep Perspective: Air Travel Isn’t Everything That’s Wrong With Society
Frank Bruni packs a ton of complaints about aviation into a single New York Times column, which really is meant as an allegory for his complaints about society as a whole. He packs a lot of disparate complaints into one column! lack of infrastructure investment poor manners inequality The ‘rich get richer’ theme doesn’t especially work in aviation, at least in the US context he’s describing since airfares have gotten far lower over time in inflation-adjusted dollars, even after including all add-on fees and even with the run-up over the past two years. legroom hasn’t gotten materially worse, even with JetBlue adding seats and American adding seats. In fact US carriers have been adding extra legroom seating that offer a mid-range product between economy and first class, it’s easy to forget that “economy plus” is…
Book a Stopover… Even When Your Frequent Flyer Program No Longer Gives You Free Stopovers
Just because your frequent flyer program no longer allows stopovers included free as part of an international award (American eliminated them entirely, Delta sheds them completely January 1), doesn’t mean you shouldn’t book a stopover. The point of this post isn’t that it’s possible to still trick a program into giving you a stopover for free, although some programs with distance-based award charts can give you cheaper awards with a stopover than without one. (British Airways, which prices each segment separately, can be an example of this.) Rather the point is that a stopover may cost you fewer miles than you think — certainly fewer miles than making an additional trip to another region of the world. So it may make sense to spend the miles to visit another city, even though it isn’t “free.”…
