Tag Archives for united airlines.
The Summer From Hell was the United Airlines pilot work slowdown in 2000. It was disruptive enough that my own memories of flight delays and cancellations are still fresh.
But it’s the United’s 1985 pilot strike that still engenders bitterness, thirty five years later.
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.
On January 14 the World Health Organization parroted China that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus. The next day the U.S. had its first identified case but we wouldn’t know it for six more days. New York didn’t confirm it had a case until the end of February.
Vaughn Cordle was a United Airlines Boeing 787 pilot, flying out of Beijing several times a month. He noticed an uptick in sick passengers on his flights between China and Washington Dulles as far back as December, including a co-pilot making Beijing roundtrips. He fell ill in mid-January.
United today announced that customers can have fees waived for changes to travel through end of the year provided they make their change or cancellation by April 30.
You’re better off waiting for a significant flight change or cancellation and insisting on a refund, and the April 30 deadline should be extended anyway. There doesn’t seem a strong reason to act now.
There are few flights, few passengers. The airlines are applying for government money that limits their ability to furlough workers.
So instead of sitting idle they’re spending their time making masks. Quality, non-scammy masks are hard to source. Delta even had half a million masks stolen.
United is extending everyone’s current elite status through January 31, 2021 and extending club memberships by 6 months as well as extending PlusPoints upgrades by 6 months that were set to expire through January 31, 2021.
They are also dropping requirements to earn status by 50%.
Delta was first out of the gate to extend current member elite status through January 2022.
United clearly had a status extension plan in the can, ready to go, and was just waiting to see if another airline forced their hand – because within hours, on a Sunday afternoon, United’s MileagePlus is also announcing a status extension.
For ‘at least’ the next three weeks United will operate a reduced schedule with only 17 flights from the New York area, including 15 from Newark. Today American Airlines is scheduled to operate more flights from Newark than United.
One hundred and thirty five Holland America cruise ship passengers were turned away by United Airlines on Friday night after cabin crew refused to work a flight to Sydney if they were allowed on board.
I’ve cancelled American AAdvantage award tickets and Delta SkyMiles tickets for travel in the next month and neither program charged their usual mileage redeposit fee. These fee waivers are normally in place for top tier elite frequent flyers, but where a ‘no change fee’ fee waiver applies to travel, the redeposit fee for mileage tickets has been waived as well.
Not so with United, although that finally seems to have changed.
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 »
