American Airlines

TSA Employee Damages 9 American Eagle Aircraft, Delays 40 Flights…Inspector Clouseau: “Even I’m Not that Stupid”

Aug 20th, 2008 | By Jared Blank

For some reason a TSA inspector decided to check out 9 American Eagle aircraft on the ground a O’Hare overnight on Monday and in the process managed to damage 9 planes and cause 40 flight delays. From reading this thread at Flyertalk, the TSA shouldn’t have been out there on the first place. But they [...]

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Ryanair: If You Buy from a 3rd Party Site, We May Cancel Your Ticket

Aug 11th, 2008 | By Jared Blank

Ryanair is taking a rather harsh stand against so-called Screenscraping Sites that search its site for fares. The airline now says that it will cancel the tickets of anyone who books through a third-party site that screenscrapes. As it would be rather difficult for you (the traveler) to know how a third-party site is accessing [...]

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2 Flights Always Late in June

Aug 7th, 2008 | By Jared Blank

USA Today once again published the list of the 25 most delayed flights, and (quite impressively) two flights were delayed every single day. Well done. American’s flight 1639 from JFK to San Juan was delayed 100% of the time at an average of 2 hours and 8 minutes (bueno!) and Comair 5292 from Minneapolis to [...]

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When LaGuardia Is and Isn’t The Same as Newark

Jul 31st, 2008 | By Jared Blank

No stories from us on Friday as we head to beautiful, incredibly-hard-to-get-to Springfield Illinois.
My only airline-related note about this trip is that I am flying American out of Newark on a reward ticket and I wanted to change my flight to depart from LaGuardia (American allows you to change reward tickets for free if you’re [...]

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Hm…Maybe Delta Knows What It’s Doing

Jul 17th, 2008 | By Jared Blank

We’re in airline earnings season, and we’ve seen the first few airlines post what most newspapers are reporting as giant losses. But look beyond those headlines of billions of dollars of red ink and you’ll see that most of those losses are one-time non-cash charges, and that Delta actually posted a nice little $137 million [...]

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Passengers Boo Late-Arriving Crew, Delay Flight 24 Hours

Jul 9th, 2008 | By Jared Blank

An odd one:
Passengers waiting for their American Airlines flight crew to arrive for their flight to New York from Miami apparently became hostile and began to boo the crew when they arrived at the gate an hour and fifteen minutes after departure time. The crew became increasingly upset at the passengers and decided they wouldn’t [...]

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FAQs for American Airlines’ Bag Fee

Jun 14th, 2008 | By Jared Blank

American’s PR team was nice enough to send over an FAQ for the upcoming first bag fee, and I thought I’d pass along at a courtesy. Not that I’d tell you to go over to Dallas Love and fly Southwest to avoid the fee, but someone else might tell you that.
The majority of American’s passengers [...]

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How Much Does the Fuel Cost for Your Next Flight?

Jun 10th, 2008 | By Jared Blank

The Wall St. Journal has an interesting article looking at how much it’s costing airlines to fly you from here to there - you may be surprised to hear that upwards of 70% of your fare may be going just to pay the fuel bill. For example, American’s fuel bill for a roundtrip flight [...]

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American Airlines to Charge $5 to Book Reward Ticket Online

Jun 2nd, 2008 | By Jared Blank

(Thanks to View from the Wing):
American Airlines announced that it will now charge $5 to book a reward ticket online (unless you’re executive platinum). Let me put that another way: their “free ticket” now costs $5. I know they need to get cash. That’s fine. It’s difficult to get annoyed [...]

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American: Feel Free to Tip Our Skycaps

May 30th, 2008 | By Jared Blank

In an age of fees for everything, American has actually eliminated one: The airline has decided to drop its $2 fee for skycaps at all its airports. Even better, it’s ended its ludicrous standoff with the skycaps and is permitting passengers to tip them again in Boston (if you missed it, AA was in a [...]

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This Week on BNET (June 29 - July 3) - Recession Means More People Travel Locally, Take Shorter Trips It’s not a surprise, but people are changing their travel habits in this economy. The numbers are sobering to see. US-EU Open Skies Phase II Talks Begin All eyes are on round two of the talks - this, the EU hopes, will result in cabotage rights within the [...]

Airplane toilets really suck… literally - Some light fare for a pre-holiday Friday afternoon… My favorite gimmick from the recent (brilliant) AirTran PR stunt, wherein comedian Mark Malkoff lived on AirTran planes for an entire month, ostensibly to get over his fear of flying. In the process, he learned about the vacuum power of airplane toilets, as is evidenced [...]

Photo #100 - Can you believe we’re already at picture 100? To make it a bit more challenging, let’s do five pictures today instead of one. Feel free to guess any one of the pictures, but the winner is the first person that guesses all five. 1. Thanks to JonNYC for sending in this one. 2. Thanks to Roberto for sending in [...]

Alaska Route-specific Double Miles Promos - Alaska has some upcoming new service to Texas which they’re promoting with double miles offers, registration required for each: Service between Seattle and Austin starts August 3, and they’re offering double miles through October 15. Service between San Jose and Austin starts September 2, and they’re offering double miles through October 31. Service between Seattle and Houston starts [...]