Tag Archives for american airlines.
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.”
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.
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.
A passenger noticed an American Airlines employee at Washington National airport offering a prayer over the PA system at one of the gates and videotaped it. They sent it to a friend who shared it to twitter with outrage. Although I don’t really see anything wrong with offering a prayer right now, it may even bring some comfort during difficult times.
American Airlines has a small business program, Business Extra, that gives points to businesses when their employees travel on the airline. This is separate from, and in addition to, the AAdvantage miles that travelers earn themselves.
The airline announced today that they are giving up to 1 million Business Extra points to minority-owned small businesses and also non-profits.
The independent Association of Professional Flight Attendants represents cabin crew at American Airlines. They have been dysfunctional for years and to Sara Nelson, the supposed ‘most powerful flight attendant in America,’ they look like a juicy target for her Association of Flight Attendants which is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America and AFL-CIO.
On June 8th American Airlines eliminated iSolve, the tool frontline employees used to compensate customers for things like broken seats and missing meals. Instead they told employees to ‘de-escalate the situation’ and make customers happy – as long as they gave them nothing.
On June 16th, it turns out, they pulled the plug on paper compensation vouchers as well. And in the worst of corporate doublespeak, they’re telling employees they did this “to provide consistency for our customers.” No matter what the channel is, you get nothing!
TSA is rolling out the “Credential Authentication Technology” (CAT) tool broadly. They check both the authenticity of the document and whether the information matches what they have for the passenger’s ‘Secure Flight’ data in their reservation (name, date of birth, gender). If it isn’t a match, the passenger is sent over to the airline to get things sorted.
However since passengers no longer need a boarding pass when this system is in use, they’re proceeding past the security checkpoint without first checking in for their flight
When this became available last year for AAdvantage, and with other airlines rolling this out to reservations, I’d just assumed American was already doing this for secure flight. It surprised me to see they only just rolled it out.
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 »
