Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a deserved domestic focus on dealing with the immediate Covid-19 outbreaks within individual countries. This resulted in the implementation of travel restrictions and the closing of borders to non-essential international travel. Recently Reuters reported that the U.S. will reopen its borders on Nov. 8 to fully vaccinated passengers from 33 countries. With this in mind, I thought I would share my recent experience of travelling to Los Angeles as an international…
As the pandemic hopefully turns a corner, it is time for airlines to really get back to competing with each other. One place they’re going to have to do that is with loyalty programs, which are and will continue to be useful tools to drive repeat customers and build brand…
“Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people onboard our planes every day. That’s why we plan for 50% of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color.” That is the leading line from United's announcement last week that it…
Late last year, the impending arrival of vaccines for COVID-19 stood as a glimmer of hope for the travel industry. Many thought vaccines would help travel return and begin down the path toward normalcy for airlines. But even now, with multiple vaccines beginning distribution, that optimism has quickly soured. There…
Over the past several years, airlines in the U.S. have gorged on easy business, many making money hand over fist. This led to some brazen liberties taken by three of major U.S. airlines to devalue their loyalty programs. The logic was simple: they were making tons of money, so what…
As the airline industry grapples with the health and economic consequences of COVID-19, one might be tempted to look at how the world managed and recovered from the world’s last major pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918. The Spanish flu infected about 500 million people worldwide and claimed around 50…
These days, many people in and around the industry see Air India as a poorly run airline that most avoid flying if they can help it. They’re known for poor on-time performance, rundown planes, indifferent staff and more. A quick search online results in dozens of bad reviews for every…
Everyone knows the aviation industry is in turmoil. We’ve been hearing about it since March, where people began to realize the impact on the industry would be bigger than what happened to it through 9/11, the 2008 financial crash and the Oil Crisis put together. Initially, it was the drop…
With certification steps entering into the final stages, the 737 MAX is expected to return to revenue service by year-end. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently conducted test flights with its engineers and pilots on board, a major step in the re-certification of the 737 MAX following its grounding after…
This week we faced some sad news. It was slipped to us right before the start of the holiday weekend and it didn’t get much attention outside of the aviation community, but for us, the news hit home hard. It wasn’t anything we weren’t expecting. We knew it was coming,…
