Tag Archives for united airlines.
Which lavatory are you allowed to use on your flight? If you’re a coach passenger, can you use the bathroom up front in first class? What if a flight attendant’s drink cart is blocking the aisle and you can’t make your way to the back and you really have to go?
During the pandemic airlines were gifted billions in taxpayer dollars to keep all of their employees on staff, ready to work when travel returned. Only they didn’t do that. They convinced employees to retire early, and they paid employees to stay home rather than staying certified and work ready.
As they tried to get employees to take unpaid leaves and early retirements, the offers sometimes got better and better. One United Airlines employee, who took an ‘early out’ is suing because United made a better offer than the one they accepted, and they want that better offer too.
They’ll use the same reduced criteria for earning status in 2022 that they used for 2021.
United Airlines has a new ‘cash and points’ option for using miles to reduce the price of a ticket. It is not a good deal, and not a good use of miles.
Delta’s operation melted down over last year’s holidays. Southwest has melted down over lack of crew. American melted down over the summer without enough pilots and then at the end of October without enough flight attendants. And now everyone’s worried about holiday travel with the government requiring airlines to have their employees vaccinated – with deadlines coming up.
United Airlines sent out a remarkable email, both for its candor and effectiveness but also for the way it brutally subtweeted these competitors. Under CEO Scott Kirby’s signature, United obliquely references news of airline meltdowns and says in effect ‘this won’t happen to us.’
New York LaGuardia, New York JFK and Washington National airports are ‘slot controlled’. That means there are limits on the number of takeoffs and landings at each airport, and the right to use those have been given (free!) to incumbent airlines as a property right. That’s a huge subsidy to incumbent carriers.
Normally slots come with ‘use it or lose it’ rules. If an airline doesn’t make use of their slots 80% of the time, those slots can be reassigned to another carrier. As a result you’ll see airlines flying more or less ghost flights, service designed to hold the slot rather than meet any economic need.
At the start of Wednesday’s United Airlines earnings call, CEO Scott Kirby outlined four reasons he believes United is positioned to win relative to competitor airlines.
Viral video with nearly 4 million views shows a passenger on being kicked off of a Los Angeles-bound United flight “after screaming, threatening, and pushing flight crew and passengers.” Things began going south when the passenger wouldn’t get off of his phone, and only later did it descend into a mask dispute.
Maybe for the first time ever the passenger demands to be removed from the flight yelling at the crewmember that he “didn’t even want to go to Cali.” He took off his mask and declared plans to dox the flight attendant, and pushed a seated passenger to get into the aisle.
United elites striving for status will find this card valuable, though, and those who would pay for a club membership are better off doing so in most cases via this card’s annual fee in my view anyway. The rest of the add-on benefits are gravy.
When face mask policies were introduced for air travel last year, ‘but I’m drinking’ became a common excuse and passengers could nurse a Starbucks throughout the entire flight. This is no longer acceptable, or at least while some passengers will still do it – and some flight attendants allow it – the rule doesn’t permit it and you may get kicked off the plane.
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 »
