American Airlines is coming under fire today, and it isn’t just because they allegedlydiscriminated against Glenn Beck. This is for their actions involving a sixteen year old with Down Syndrome and his family. The teenager was booked with his parents in first class from Newark to Los Angeles on Sunday. American Airlines commented that the…
In December 2010, United announcedit was leaving Apollo, the reservations system it had used for decades, to switch to HP’s Shares, which Continental used. United actually created the Apollo Reservations system in 1971. The airline evaluated Apollo, SHARES and “several other options†and chose HP SHARES as the “best customer and employee alternative and because its…
JetBlue Flight Attendant Roberto Rodriguez is suing JetBlue, claiming he was unfairly dismissed from his job. According to Rodriguez, he and a fellow flight attendant he’d shared a room with arrived late at the airport for a flight due to his hotel not providing the requested wakeup call. Arriving barely in time for the flight,…
In June of 2009, we reported on how Continental Airlines had lost a young girl who was travelling under its unaccompanied minor program. Another similar situation has arisen with United Airlines, which merged with Continental, to the point that there is a petition on change.org, asking United to either redesign or discontinue its Unaccompanied Minors…
Frontier has announced it will be launching service from Trenton, New Jersey to Orlando International Airport in Florida. The service will be twice weekly, on Monday and Friday, and operated using A319 aircraft. Service will begin November 16th. Trenton-Mercer Airport is a bit of an odd place for Frontier to be trying to fly. They…
It is always sad when we lose another airline. Delta will shut down its subsidiary Comair as of September 30th. The writing has been on the wall for a long while. Comair primarily operates 50-seat regional jets, an aircraft type that many carriers are scaling down. Comair was founded in 1977. It became…
A United Airlines flight was scheduled to leave Shanghai on Wednesday, but its passengers ended up stranded till Saturday. Maintenance problems ground airplanes all the time. To be realistic, what is the alternative? Would any passenger rather fly on an unsafe plane? But it took that many days for replacement parts to arrive, which is…
In the airline industry, the passenger name record(PNR), is a single record in a computer reservation system that contains a single reservation for one or more passengers. The problem is that PNRs have no memory. They represent one trip. They do not represent the passenger’s relationship with the airline. For that, in the 80s, airlines…
Last week, we reported on how Spirit Airlines would not even refund the money of a dying veteran. After a week of criticism, Ben Baldanza, CEO of Spirit Airlines, issued a press release. He didn’t apologize for the company’s policy so much as apologize for failing to explain why being rigid and inflexible allows them…
Jerry Meekins is on a mission to change the No Refund Policy of Spirit Airlines. Meekins recently purchased a ticket on Spirit, and subsequently was diagnosed with Terminal Cancer. It was his expectation, that under the circumstances, Spirit might make an exception of return his money. Spirit responded that it wouldn’t be fair to bend…
The last vestige of the Cookie, Midwest Airlines, is dying. Bad enough that Frontier Airlines, which swallowed Midwest, is slowly eliminating their routes, their hubs in Milwaukee and Kansas City, but now the most unique thing about Midwest…the symbol of care…a cookie baked fresh in the back of the plane, dies May 1st. “The company…
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="240" caption="People Express Airlines (1986) (Photo credit: Hunter-Desportes)"][/caption] PEOPLExpress is back…well, the name is, at least. The new PEOPLExpress is a low-cost carrier with a mission statement to serve markets currently underserved by major carriers. Despite the fact it has not even filed with the DOT to become a scheduled airline, they…
On Friday, Malev ceased operation. Late that night and into Saturday morning, fourteen Boeing 737 aircraft, leased from the International Lease Finance Corporation, were flown to Shannon, Ireland. Malev operated eighteen 737s, seventeen of which were leased from ILFC. The first of the aircraft to leave Budapest flew a solemn lap around the airport and…
Last week, Spanair ceased operations after 25 years. The airline had been looking for a takeover partner to ensure operations, but was unable to do so and the government withdrew the funding support it had been giving the airline. Today, after 65 years, state-owned Malev Hungarian Airlines ceased operations as the government withdrew financing. The…
Having never flown Alaska Airlines, it was news to us that for 30 years, together with their meals, the airline has distributed prayer cards featuring serene color pictures and verses from the Book of Psalms. Now we’ll never have a chance to get one, as the airline announced that it will stop distributing the cards…
All was normal aboard American Airlines Flight 980 from Brazil to Miami. Then, two hours into the eight hour flight, with food service underway, the plane suddenly lurched violently. The unexpected turbulencesent a food cart flying, damaging the ceiling and landing on and injuring a flight attendant. In all, six members of the flight crew…
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Image by Getty Images via @daylife"][/caption] Brad Hall “designs systems for improving workforce performance”. Brad Hall has a PhD industrial-organizational psychology. Brad Hall knows that U.S airlines have awful customer service. And Brad Hall knows why- unions. It is a foregone conclusion for Dr. Hall; one he is unwilling to let…
Apparently, the TSA is so embattled and the reputation of its employees in such low regard, that when a TSA agent behaves in a normal, responsible manner, as anyone would be expected to do, it becomes news and he is heaped with lavish praise. We don’t mean to take away from TSA supervisor John Deschamp. …
Strong headwinds have led to sharp increase in the number of transatlantic Continental Airlines flights forced to make unscheduled stops to refuel, the Wall Street Journal reports. The airline, owned by United Continental Holdings, has pushed the envelope by aggressively using the Boeing 757 on transatlantic flights. The plane is smaller and cheaper to operate…
Though 1.5 million bags have been lost by American Airlines through September of this year, that’s 900,000 fewer than in the same period of 2008, according to a recent article by Scott McCartney at the Wall Street Journal. While this sounds impressive, it is impossible to assess how much improvement there has been without knowing the total number of checked bags during each period.
The Daily News reported this week on an account on airliners.net believed to belong to Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who rode the chute. Airliners.net is a popular forum site frequented by airline professionals and enthusiasts.
The Consumerist, of which we are an avid reader, posted on the subject of Rule 240…however, we felt their post was somewhat brief on what Rule 240 meant, and decided to revisit the issue. We approached it in a post in September. To reiterate, Rule 240 has no power post-deregulation. Deregulation occurred in 1978. Many…