Aug 09 2016

In May I shared that Suzanne Rubin would be leaving as head of the American AAdvantage program. She led the program since December 2011 when Maya Leibman became the American’s Chief Information Officer and brought stability to a role that had seen several leaders in a short time.

American announced today that Bridget Blaise-Shamai has been promoted to Vice President – Loyalty and President of the AAdvantage program. Bridget’s role had been Managing Director, Customer Loyalty and Insights – the position Suzanne held before becoming AAdvantage Vice President. She was the the senior person on the team once Suzanne left and the manager in charge in the interim.

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Aug 09 2016

This morning American Airlines announced more free inflight entertainment options in coach. This is both strange and entirely predictable.

Of all the things to offer ‘free’ (or at no incremental charge) inflight entertaiment makes sense as one of those things. Once you offer it onboard, there’s no incremental cost for each additional passenger to access it. And one passenger’s access doesn’t trade off with another’s. The airline isn’t rationing a scarce resource or incurring additional cost.

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Aug 09 2016

No-frills cheap fares are no longer limited to domestic markets where Spirit and Allegiant fly. With the introduction of low cost carriers across the Atlantic — Norwegian and Wow Air — combined with softening economic conditions, fear, and overcapacity we’re seeing frequent deep discounts to travel the world.

Between January and March Wow Air has roundtrips between New York and airports in London, Paris, and Amsterdam starting at $299 roundtrip.

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Aug 09 2016

Etihad Aviation Group CEO James Hogan says loads on their US flights are “acceptable” but “there’s pressure on yield” (prices are too low). Since they look to fly to gateways and leverage the networks of their partner airlines, he doesn’t see much more US expansion “Maybe one more city. That’s it”

Hogan also offers this assessment of their premium The Residence product on their Airbus A380s which fly from Abu Dhabo to New York, London, Mumbai, Sydney and Melbourne:

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Aug 08 2016

Delta’s operations suffered a significant IT lapse today. Ultimately hundreds of flights were cancelled and many more than that were delayed inconveniencing travelers across the globe.

While Delta’s CEO recorded an apology video and the airline updated its flight cancellation stats online throughout the day, it should have been more forthcoming with its customers about what happened (not started the day deflecting blame) and should have been more flexible with its customers as well (a travel waiver that extended to customers scheduled to fly on Tuesday, with a longer period in which to rebook travel).

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Aug 08 2016

A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.

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Aug 08 2016

American Airlines fees for overweight bags can be as much as $450 between the US and Asia.

The standard weight limit is 50 pounds. Between 51 and 70 pounds is $100 per bag. But once you get over 70 pounds things get really expensive.

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Aug 08 2016

Delta’s IT systems went down overnight. Delta couldn’t send out flights that had boarded presumably because they couldn’t push flight plans or calculate required fuel. They couldn’t check passengers in for new flights. Customer service lines started snaking around airports.

IT staff everywhere no doubt had their emergency phones ringing and those on site furiously turned the power off and on hoping that a reboot would fix things.

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