Tag Archives for american.
Travel & Leisure is promoting dressing up so you look like someone airlines want to upgrade. That doesn’t work, but reminds me of an equally silly claim in Bloomberg that there’s two magic words that work every time that do not work at all.
These are great examples of the genre of travel writing that claim you can fly first class just by pretending it’s your honeymoon. I prefer equally silly — and equally effective — suggestions that might be a little more fun.
Qatar has the best business class product in the world in its ‘QSuites’ — revolutionary suites with doors and movable partitions that allow two and even four passengers to travel together in their own space. Right now there’s strong availability on routes with QSuites especially as we look out to the end of the schedule – March through June 2021 – for four passengers from most of the U.S. cities they serve.
A simple way to think about better breakfast is to think brunch. That opens up a whole new world of possibility beyond reheated scrambled eggs or omelettes, granola or oatmeal.
After the close of markets on Thursday Delta announced they’re acquiring 20% of LATAM. That’s huge for Delta giving them a big presence in Latin America, on top of owning 49% of Aeromexico.
This positions Delta well to grow in American’s back yard of Miami and it undercuts American’s South America flights by denying them connecting feed, and blocks American’s joint venture with LATAM (which would have had to exclude Chile flights). And it really sticks it to the CEO of Qatar Airways given their 10% stake in LATAM.
Since norms vary across airlines and have only recently changed it’s not a moral failing of passengers who don’t know or understand the position that any given airline takes here. On the contrary, it’s incumbent on the airline to explain in clear terms what their policy is and why rather than suggesting a passenger wanting to move is doing something untoward.
Ground and flight attendant employees get a 4% raise. Employees who receive merit-based pay adjustments will have a 4% increase in the total compensation pool available to them. And bonuses are expected to be higher, too.
Just as importantly the airline communicates that it is investing in solving pain points in jobs, and employees are reminded that they’re empowered to address the most important issues at the airline (safety). It’s a well-written memo.
I’ve certainly written the most about the mechanics slowdown component of this issue. It’s what employees and the company have been most vocal about. But even without that the operation would still be suffering. And the reason to get a joint contract done isn’t just to end the animosity (an odd place to be for a company claiming its culture is its competitive advantage), it will also reduce the friction in getting legitimate maintenance work accomplished — on ex-US Airways aircraft by legacy American Airlines employees and vice versa.
Even so, the airline will have to invest in clearing deferred maintenance items. It will have to stock the parts needed to keep the fleet flying. In the meantime they’re still planning to re-start their domestic narrowbody densification program next year, so they’ll be taking additional aircraft out of service. It may be awhile for the airline’s operation to recover even after they get a deal done with mechanics and there’s little indication at this point that a deal is close.
With American Airlines opening 15 new gates in the E satellite concourse of Dallas Fort-Worth airport they’ve surged to 900 peak daily departures at the airport and opened a fifth Admirals CLub there.
Charlotte is their second largest hub, and they’re growing it to 700 daily departures. There just aren’t enough rocking chairs there to go around.
The plane could be re-certified before November 2, but the airline will need time to complete required procedures after that. And once again they need to send out packets for employees to bid on schedules that either will or won’t include the MAX. What the November 2 date says to me is that American is pretty sure the plane won’t be ready to fly in revenue service at the beginning of October. They cannot guarantee of course that they won’t push back the aircraft’s return date again.
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.
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 »
