News and notes from around the interweb:
- Isn’t this fraud? Pet peeve of mine is airlines marketing a quality product and falling back on ‘we just sell transport from a to b’ when they don’t deliver.
But I am not flying a transcon route. I am flying a standard @AmericanAir A321, and their first class doesn’t look like that at all. (The photo is of their A321T.) pic.twitter.com/p9dwRGZhv8
— Ross Feinstein (@RossFeinstein) July 22, 2023
- Coach buy on board doesn’t look like the pictures.
Go on my last flight which took 11 hrs to get from OKC to EWR I decided to order food on the plane. The magazine mad the meal enticing until I received it
What the magazine showed and what I received@united pic.twitter.com/FRZWoZOa1P— jnappi (@grandpa0411) July 22, 2023
- American Airlines now encourages people to join AAdvantage when they decide not to fly. Their failure to make it easy to become an AAdvantage member, such as opting out of joining during the booking process, has been loyalty malpractice.
- The germiest spots in your hotel room, according to an inspector (HT: @crucker)
- Heh.
Dear @Delta, thanks for the hotel voucher for the sold out hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. Also, thanks for the food voucher that didn’t work! I really appreciate your commitment to customer satisfaction. Without all your help I’d be sleeping in the airport on an empty stomach. pic.twitter.com/6MAckf1Dwt
— Joe Patterson (@joe3patt) July 23, 2023
- Why high temperatures can make planes too heavy to take off
- Stupid list best airports in the world for food, and Atlanta is number two and Dallas – Fort Worth number four? With Singapore number 10? There are places you can eat that are o.k. at DFW, but I’d rather have La Carreta at Miami (not on the list) than anything there.
There have to be two dozen places to stop at Singapore Changi that are better than anything in the U.S. The only place noteworthy to eat at Chicago O’Hare (#8) is Tortas Frontera.
- China’s WeChat and Alilpay now accept Visa and Mastercard maybe Mastercard should restore the upper case C in its branding (‘MasterCard’) for China.
Lol. Well, we got caught In the over Christmas flights disaster and stuck at DFW with flight repeatedly delayed,then canceled with AA.
Got hotel voucher and when we arrived,they were fully booked. We had to hike across a couple of parking lots, in the cold, at 1am, dragging luggage to another one.
The $12 meal voucher barely covered a cup of coffee.
Guess we should be grateful for what little we got.
I guess I should add that several days later,without asking, AA sent us each 15k points for all the inconvenience.
Reminds me of flying London to Berlin on BA from London City Airport. I was in Business class, but there was no lounge at the airport. Had never flown out of that airport before, and will make sure I never do so again!
I would add the in-flight credit card pitches to the airline fraud list. I can’t count the number of times the FAs make crazy promises about how the miles can be used. Its often like “these 60k miles are enough to fly you and your whole family round-trip to anywhere in the world!” The fact of the matter is that since they all eliminated award charts, any statement that begins “this is enough miles for…” would basically be fraud.
Absolutely agree that it is fraud. They sell spacious, clean seats, with serene, relaxed passengers implying that the environment around them is also peaceful and conducive to such quiet luxury. I’ve received something approaching the marketed version on overseas flights, but never anything “as pictured” on a domestic flight (with the exception of the seat size which I obviously appreciate). I’m smart enough to not actually expect that and would be astonished to find it as pictured, but wouldn’t that be a lovely thing to treat customers honestly and give them what they were sold!
Only two. Time to get to work!!!
-Airline’s Marketing Department
Even award flights booked 11 months in advance are a fraud because many of those schedules will not be flown. AA has been allowing booking of ORD to RNO direct for the last 3 years yet they haven’t flown directly for 2 years (old Reno airlines flight). When the real schedule is announced at 6 months prior no consideration (seat choice etc) is given to bookings made 5 months earlier. How Nice!
The poster about the fruit and cheese plate stated the flight from Oklahoma City,(OKC) to Newark (EWR) was 11 hours. Was that on the Wright Brothers airline?
The funny thing about AA is that they are marketing an outgoing product, which will disappear next year. Even images of standard planes show their outgoing cabin.
Delta has long said its regional jets & Boeing 717 flights feature “large entertainment seatback screen” in the list of amenities touting First Class.
Of course, none of its regional jets offer entertainment of any kind, seatback or streaming to one’s personal device, anymore.
Nor do its Boeing 717s offer seatback IFE, either.
I’ve noted this falsehood many times before, likely elsewhere in the reader comments section of VFTW, other blogs, in Tweets (when it was still relevant) and in LinkedIn commentaries.
Clearly, neither the airline nor government regulators charged with ensuring “truth in advertising” are concerned about boldly (brazenly?) touting amenities they don’t really offer.
Sadly, that’s just the way things are now – fudging facts with reckless abandon trumps honesty and integrity.
People love to run around and yell “Fraud” and lawyers encourage it until they realize they paid the lawyer and lost the case. There is a LOT of fine print around any image or claim. I have worked in marketing for over 30 years and only since the advent of social media has this become such a ridiculous situation as too everyone filming and yelling fraud. While I agree some injustices have been captured, the majority is whiny, self righteous, uneducated or spoiled brats, who think the world owns then everything none of which they deserve.
Get over yourselves and be glad you can fly first class at all and your not homeless or working 3 jobs.
Viking times. I love the way in us there is a constant attempt to denigrate expectation. If i pay thrice the price to fly “first” i expect my moneys worth. Its not crying , its a legit expectation. Sadly dissers like you convince the so called service providers there is somehing bad about complaining when you dont get what you paid for. So nothing will ever get done in usa. Learn from the east
@Don Smith: He said it took 11 hours. That’s possible with a bad delay (or a cancelation or two.)
While there are many fraudulent marketing claims in aviation, I thought the example you used (guest trying to cancel a ticket, being told that if they became an AA member, they could get a trip credit instead) was fair and pretty good.
Taiwan is absolutely the best airport for food- I’ve never had a bad meal there, and as pointed out in the article, the average price is about $6.
Singapore is way too low- including Jewel, there are 212 different restaurants, and that’s counting food courts as 1, even though there are usually 10 outlets. Din Tai Fung, Shake Shack, branches of Michelin-starred restaurant chains, Steak and Lobster- it’s like Alice’s Restaurant- you can get everything you want…
@sunviking82 “People love to run around and yell “Fraud” and lawyers encourage it until they realize they paid the lawyer and lost the case. ”
Not making a legal claim, I am making an ethical one
No need to hire a lawyer to sue for fraud. Do it in Small Claims Court. In California where I reside, it’s not difficult to obtain a judgment against the airlines because we have very strong consumer protection laws (against false/misleading advertising). The Small Claims Court judge can also rule that the carriage of contract is unconscionable if the Judge thinks so.
@sunviking82 being in marketing, you probably know all the ways to skirt the ‘truth in advertising’ laws to fool/fleece the public. Why is it wrong to want to get what you pay for?
There’s no reason to be rude to an employee who has no control over a situation, but don’t pretend a carry-on doesn’t fit to get bonus bucks.
And why should I feel ‘lucky’ to fly first class? There’s a reason I pay for it. It’s not being entitled if I pay 3x the price of the other seat and don’t get at least a bigger one. Food, too. It wasn’t free. I saved my money elsewhere to pay for it.