Tag Archives for compensation.
A woman took to social media to rant about British Airways stonewalling her over compensation after another passenger had the audacity to die on her flight, causing her much distress. And since CPR was being performed in the aisle of the aircraft, cabin crew were unable to provide a second meal service – preferring to try to save a life instead. She wants to know what she can do to get British Airways to cover the pain and suffering that she had to endure?
Airlines lost billions of dollars during the pandemic. But their leaders shed costs, in many cases by downsizing staff and brought in government subsidies (designed to keep them from shedding staff). It was a test of leadership, and CEOs were rewarded handsomely for the task.
It’s a wet hot American summer of flying through delays, cancellations, and long lines at airports. It may be a comfort to know that airline CEOs were well paid bringing it to us.
According to the commentator, American sees that they’re overbooked on the day of travel, delays that flight for a long period so passengers make other plans, and then they no longer have to involuntarily deny anyone boarding.
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!
Compensation may not be gone for good. The airline appears to be surveying what sort of compensation they should be offering. The new options aren’t likely to incur liability on the airline’s books – although they may add crowding to the start of the boarding process, and to the airline’s lounges, at precisely the time when the airline’s best customers will value distancing most.
Effective Monday American Airlines has taken away the tool airports, flight attendants, and reservations used to compensate customers when a crew member spills a drink on them, their seat is broken, or their inflight meal didn’t get loaded onto the aircraft.
To save money, instead of compensating customers when things go wrong, employees are supposed to show they care and acknowledge what the customer is saying… just not do anything about it.
United Airlines set the world on first when David Dao was dragged off of a United Express plane and bloodied three years ago. United’s CEO Oscar Munoz apologized… for having to re-accommodate him.
The worldwide outcry was so great that airlines had to revisit their policies for involuntary denied boardings. Now, as United does everything possible to reduce costs, it is scaling back efforts to control the sort of denied boardings that led to David Dao’s being dragged off a plane.
A new SEC filing has details on the most recent United Airlines corporate executive compensation. United’s CEO Oscar Munoz will take $0 in base salary until June 30. Incoming CEO Scott Kirby will do the same. But how much of a cut is that, really?
Executive compensation is unpopular during tough times for a company. Of course if United makes it through to the other side of COVID-19 Kirby may earn his pay more than ever before.
United flight 363 from Newark to Honolulu was supposed to be operated by a Boeing 777 on Saturday. The airline swapped the plane for a Boeing 767-300, and that meant fewer business class seats. The airline needed ten volunteers who were willing to downgrade.
These ten passengers each received $10,000 in travel voucher compensation for volunteering, or $100,000 total for the one flight, and they still got to fly in premium economy seats.
In 2015 United launched a new compensation program with staff given discretion on when to distribute the vouchers.
United has tweaked the program several times, and is now testing giving out miles instead of travel vouchers.
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 »
