Tag Archives for american airlines.
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.
Back in September when American Airlines launched their partnership with Zoës Kitchen they introduced new coach buy on board items from the Mediterranean chain that people seem to love.
At the time I shared that the airline planned to roll out a Zoës item as a pre-order option “similar in style” to the current cheese plate light alternative to the regular meal.
The ETA “Executive Travel App” will give you 15,000 United or American miles for booking your next trip to mark the launch of their Slack integration.
Their target audience is frequent business travelers who book travel for themselves — but anyone who downloads the app and books a trip is eligible for the bonuses.
There’s a great deal of discussion of a rumor that Etihad could sever ties with American Airlines and partner with United or even join Star Alliance instead.
I first covered these discussions over the summer but now it’s getting much broader attention.
These flights represent 5% of American’s flights but the airline says they generate more than half of premium cabin revenue. They touch 80% of American’s cargo. And “[n]early 50 percent of first and business passengers” on these flights are elites.
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.
So what happened? Presumably he was un-checked in or offloaded by the gate agent in error. This happens occasionally, most often during irregular operations when there may be multiple flights in a booking (backup options).
A customer shows up for their return flight only to find they have no reservation. The airline says “you didn’t take the flight” and the customer says, “then how did I get here?”
More premium services on offer are better and American Airlines just announced several. It can be better to buy LAX private terminal access via American, in conjunction with a premium flight, than to buy it direct. Whether helicopter transfers represent a deal is more questionable. Both offerings have been done by competitors over the past two years.
The more innovative piece is monetizing access to their excellent Flagship lounge and dining products, which is a nice perk for those interested in paying the freight. The only downside here is increased usage.
At an employee question and answer session with American Airlines leadership this past week American’s Vice President – Planning, Vasu Raja, talked about my post about the airline’s service cuts at New York JFK. He defends focusing on flying to hubs, a limited number of international destinations, and smaller cities where they have a strong customer base.
American has withdrawn from being a player in the New York market, with each retrenchment helping to accelerate the next retrenchment. American can no longer compete for the wallet share of business customers, and is only able to pick up business on a limited set of routes. As a result customers can’t remain loyal to the carrier and pay a revenue premium to go out of their way to do so, but choose it when they represent the best choice (with their limited schedule or based on price) on a one-off basis.
Last month American said that they’ve got too much Boeing 787 capacity because Europe is seasonal, they cancelled 787 flights out of Chicago, and because they keep waiting for their joint venture with Qantas to be approved which would allow them to deploy more 787s on South Pacific routes.
Last year though American ordered 47 more Boeing 787. So what are they going to do with them?
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 »
