Tag Archives for american airlines.
According to American Airlines CEO Doug Parker, in a meeting with flight attendants (a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing), alcohol will be back in economy cabins starting September 13th. Parker tied bringing booze back in economy to the end of the federal mask mandate.
Many American AAdvantage members who do not have any status at all are being gifted an elite level, upgrades, and a quick path to even earn the Executive Platinum level – with less flying and spending than the airline requires from current elites.
The beloved Biscoff cookies are one of the best things about flying, at least in coach. Traditionally they come two cookies to a package. Right now, though, some American Airlines flights are getting packages with just one cookie. And the cookie itself is smaller, too.
American Airlines has been cancelling hundreds of flights a day for several days. They don’t have enough pilots, especially Boeing 737 pilots, to operate the schedule they published.
However it appears that the system American Airlines uses to try to find pilots to pick up overtime and crew open trips may be standing in the way of getting some of its pilots to cover trips.
American Airlines cancelled 3% of its flights on Sunday, and about 2% already today. Cancellations appear to continue, and I’d guess will last through the end of the month until we hit the airline’s planned 1% pulldown of capacity for the first half of July.
If you’re flying a Boeing 737 especially this hits you hardest, since that’s the fleet type that’s been hardest hit by pilot shortages.
American Airlines has experience competing against Spirit Airlines at Dallas – Fort Worth and at their Chicago O’Hare hub. Now they’re being forced to contend with a big buildup in Spirit operations in Miami.
Here’s the game theory for how American Airlines will respond.
American Airlines eliminated free stopovers on award tickets with the April 8, 2014 AAdvantage massacre. There is one city where you can still book a free stopover – whether on award tickets or paid tickets – but only if you book by August 31.
If you’re booking travel to Japan, you can now have a free stopover in Tokyo.
On Saturday morning I was first to cover the ongoing issue American Airlines is having mass-cancelling flights. They logged about 125 cancellations on Saturday after a big cancel day on Friday. That’s about five times as many flight cancellations as United Airlines and Delta combined.
Today is worse than yesterday with 176 cancels already. That’s nearly 50% more than Saturday. And there are already about 100 cancels on the books for Monday.
Several passengers were removed from American Airlines flight 1174 from Philadelphia to Miami on Saturday after a man threw up in the coach lavatory prior to departure.
Reader Robert G. was on board on a paid first class ticket sitting in 2B. He had noticed the sick man with what he described as “a weird walk” when they were still at the gate. As the man was coming forward from the back of the plane he stopped at row two and vomited all over this first class passenger.
American Airlines has cancelled over 100 flights already today. The most common reason is ‘flight crew unavailable’. Many other flights show cancelled due to ‘operational decision’ which appears to be giving that flight’s pilots to another aircraft (in other words, also ‘flight crew unavailable’). In contrast, as of this writing United has cancelled eight flights today and Delta has cancelled two.
The issue appears to be concentrated on the Boeing 737 fleet. American’s schedule seems too big for the crew they have available, especially since they’re only midway through the process of bringing inactive pilots back online.
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 »
