Archive for the 'Continental Airlines' Category
June 04 2008
Continental is rolling out an interesting program called Million Miler for long-time frequent flyers: if you’ve flown 1 million miles with the airline they will grant you and a companion lifetime Silver Elite status. 2 million miles gets you Gold; 4 million gets Platinum. Sure, 1 million flown miles is a ton of miles. But if you’ve flown that much, it’s great to be rewarded, and it’s also really nice to see an airline think of a way to build loyalty as a way to increasing revenues (rather than slapping on additional fees, which I’m sure are coming regardless).
In any case, nice job Continental.
(A number of people have written to me noting that Delta has a similar program. Noted.)
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April 27 2008
Continental Airlines gets all the credit in the world for their announcement yesterday that they will not continue their merger talks with United Airlines, instead they will persue some sort of vague alliance involving American Airlines and British Airways. Until that’s a done deal, it’s not really worth speculating about (you can find that elsewhere), but just know that an alliance is a much better call than a merger.
Unlike the bullshit-filled nonsense that Delta & Northwest emailed out when they announced their link-up, Continental sent out a note that may or may not have been bullshit but had one of the most insightful sentences I’ve seen written by an airline exec: “We have significant cultural, operational and financial strengths compared to the rest of the industry, and we want to protect and enhance those strengths — which we believe would be placed at risk in a merger with another carrier in today’s environment. “ Imagine that - in this environment, an airline executive talking about all the great things about their airline, and how those things need to be protected. Crazy.
In the meantime, United and US Airways may end up back together and the success of that merger will rest in large part on who is going to run the combined operation (hint: let’s hope they’re in Phoenix). The two airlines have a past history together, which should alleviate some of the pains of combining the carriers. We’ll see…
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April 22 2008
British newspaper The Guardian has a report (via USA Today) saying that Continental’s 757s flying trans-Atlantic routes have “run low on fuel” on 96 occasions last year (Continental flies more 757s trans-Atlantic than anyone else). They suggest that these planes are not meant to fly such distances and that the five-fold increase in “minimum fuel declarations” by pilots and then makes the piece extra scary by tying the story together with a 1990 crash by an Avianca jet that had run out of fuel in New York.
Down in paragraph 317, the article notes that there is a difference between “minimum fuel declarations” and “fuel emergencies” - the former is a scary-sounding moniker that means the flight cannot be delayed any longer without cutting into reserves, while the latter means the plane has to land immediately (thanks to an Ask the Pilot article that gives further explanations about this topic).
As the Ask the Pilot article (and a great deal of other article’s he’s written) notes, stories like this are sensationalized garbage. There is no emergency at hand. No Continental plane 757 has come anywhere close to running out of fuel. I’m guessing this story would never have been written if the phrase “minimum fuel declarations” were called something else. The Guardian should know better…
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February 19 2008
(Thanks to View from the Wing):
Continental has eliminated what has been considered their best OnePass reward: the 135,000 first class ticket to Australia on Qantas. (Their 105,000 mile business class ticket was also a great deal.) These tickets now cost 285,000 and 190,000 miles, respectively. You used to have to call 330 days before you wanted to fly to secure one of these, so they were hardly easy to get, but they were a steal. Now, not so much.
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February 19 2008
The NY Times is reporting that Delta and Northwest are close to announcing a merger, an announcement of which will supposedly be shortly followed by Continental and United joining forces.
You’ll read plenty of commentary about these mergers elsewhere, so you don’t need me to analyze the minutia, but let me say this: if you thought flying last summer was rough, just wait until 4 of the country’s largest airlines are trying to jam themselves together during the summer travel season. We will be in a level of disaster that we’ve never even considered. Ask your friends who fly US Airways how well their merger went. Now envision that on a much larger scale. Plus thunderstorms.
One word for your summer travel plans: drive.
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January 30 2008
Good news for Continental fans: the airline will install JetBlue’s LiveTV on nearly of all its fleet beginning in early 2009 (the whole process will take about 18 months). Wi-Fi will also be available (for free) so you can use your blackberry in the sky.
First class passengers will get the television for free, while coach passengers will pay $6 (a fee I’ll gladly pay not to have to watch Two and a Half Men, which is what I generally have to watch on Continental.)
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October 29 2007
(Thanks to Upgrade Travel Better for this:)
You can read the original post for the details, but basically you can now convert 25,000 Continental OnePass miles (which is worth 1 r/t domestic flight on Continental) into 3 free flights on Southwest by converting the miles into Choice Hotel points (and then moving them around from there). You can also transfer the OnePass miles into American and a number of other airlines using the same technique. As I said, see the post for the details.
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August 14 2007
This really, really, really has been a terrible summer to fly. A Continental Airlines flight from Caracas to Newark was re-routed to Baltimore because of bad weather. Once there, it sat on the tarmac for 5 hours, where the plane (as we’ve heard in other cases) became disgusting. The passengers started to get angry, then began drumming in unison on the overhead bins, leading the pilots to call the police. The police arrived and got the passengers off the plane, which is exactly what they wanted.
Continental barely (if at all) apologized, instead insisting that they had "chips, pretzels and water" available (as if this was an acceptable response for keeping people in a tin can for 5 hours). I have no idea why airlines repeatedly try to defend themselves in these situations — it doesn’t matter why it happened, passengers find it unacceptable to be essentially held hostage for hours on end. Claiming there were pretzels available makes no one feel better.
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June 21 2007
Passengers on a Continental flight from Amsterdam to Newark last week said that service stunk - literally.
A problem with the toilets caused the flight to stop in Shannon, Ireland, overnight as mechanics tried to fix the issue. The flight re-departed the next day, but the plumbing backed up again, leaving only 1 toilet working for the 200 people. To me the best part was that flight attendants were telling people not to eat or drink anything as they were doing their meal service.
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June 12 2007
I know this is just a press release, but it’s pretty amazing nonetheless: a Continental flight attendant named Norma Heape will have her 50th anniversary with the airline this week, on a flight from Newark to Hong Kong. Pretty incredible when you consider all the upheaval in the industry (and that she’d still want to do the job after that long). Crazy.
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Continental Million Miler Program