Tag Archives for wine.
A woman and her mother are suing Delta Air Lines after they say that a man seated in their row on an international flight from New York JFK to Athens was served ten vodka drinks and a glass of wine – before harassing and sexually touching them. Flight attendants blew off their pleas, according to the women, and didn’t even report the incident to authorities. The daughter was sixteen. Eventually they were each awarded 5,000 SkyMiles.
Interesting in U.S. law you cannot protect the recipe for wine. You can only have intellectual property in its packaging. If the wine tastes identical, then customers are really getting what they expected right? And it’s just the famous brand that isn’t making profit off of it.
If you look at once high quality brands that have been acquired and watered down their products… think Tumi in luggage, Dom Perignon in champagne (not every vintage should be released, and once wouldn’t have been!)… then the brand is actually what’s lying, communicating to consumers a quality that turns out not to be delivered.
A reader recently flew Delta Air Lines business class from London Heathrow, and snapped photos of the wines being offered. I was appalled. The white was actually the same one being served in economy. It was a $5 Hidden Creek 2018 white blend. If the flight were still on the ground in the EU I believe it would legally have to be marketed as ‘table wine’.
A week ago I was first to cover that Singapore Airlines would drop Dom Perignon from its first class and Suites cabin, though generally still offer two outstanding choices: Krug and Taittinger Comtes de Champagne.
It turns out that the reason for the change isn’t budgetary (they got a great deal from Taittinger) or a sourcing problem (there’s no Dom Perignon supply chain breakdown) but rather the airline, which was at one point reportedly the world’s second-largest purchaser of Dom, has been shut out from access.
I don’t want to drink the swill that many airlines serve on board, and would love an option to pay for something nicer. I’m not sure it would work, though, as a business proposition because of the cost to source a niche product, taking up scarce galley space, when the market for this might be limited.
Airlines might also worry that a paid upcharge in a premium cabin might cheapen the experience. On the other hand they don’t seem to worry that serving cheap wines cheapens the experience! So perhaps they should give it a go as a test to improve the product while generating incremental revenue as well?
At the Wolfe Research conference yesterday Glen Hauenstein remarked that Delta had 53 Sky Clubs open pre-pandemic and will have 53 open in June. There’s an emphasis on premium product coming out of the recent challenging period. Delta believes that by offering customers more they can get customers to spend more on premium products which are “higher margin.”
But what if they’re achieving that margin by claiming to offer a premium product, but they’re really offering something you can buy at 7-11?
Former model Hannah Lee Pierson is accused of threatening to blow up her Air New Zealand flight between Melbourne and Auckland after being told by cabin crew that a glass of wine on board isn’t free, according to court documents.
She is said to have become abusive towards flight attendants, and was ultimately handcuffed and strapped to her seat to keep her out of the galley of the aircraft.
I shared a week and a half ago that American Airlines was selling off wine that it had in storage with fewer flights and customers in premium cabins. American partnered with Vinesse, a company known for offering lots of frequent flyer miles to reward customers’ buying bad wine, to handled the sales.
At American’s “State of the Airline” event following Thursday’s earnings call, Chief Customer Officer Alison Taylor was asked about the program, and joked that there must be a correlation between her being Australian, and being asked to talk about alcohol.
American Express has an ‘Amex Offer’ that I’ve added to my Platinum Card from American Express for (2) $30 off $30 statement credits for purchases at Wine Insiders.
American Airlines is raising the price of beer, wine, and liquor in coach by $1 effective October 1.
I think there are several ways to understand American’s latest ancillary fee increase.
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 »
