Archive for the 'US Airways' Category
July 10 2008
For those of you who were looking forward to seeing Stuart Little 7: Another Mouse in the House (or whatever), you’re out of luck: US Airways is removing entertainment systems from its domestic flights beginning in November. The move will save about $10 million a year in fuel.
On a positive note, they will not charge you to watch your own movies (that is, until the TSA stops allowing you to bring movies on board.)
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June 12 2008
US Airways announced a massive overhaul of their entire operation yesterday, including (but not limited to), reducing their domestic capacity by 8%; laying off 1,700 employees; charging $15 for a checked bag; all-but-shuttering their Las Vegas late night flights; charging $25 for domestic phone reservations and $35 for international; eliminating the mileage bonus for Preferred Status members; and two egregious fees:
- Sodas and water will now cost $2. I wouldn’t care much about this, but the (insert expletive here) TSA won’t let you bring liquids into the airport. In short, if you want a drink on your 5 hour flight to Phoenix, you’ll pay for it (bitch).
- Reward tickets (previously known as free tickets) will now cost you $25 in the US and $50 to Hawaii and international. We shall now refer to these as 90%-off-tickets.
Hoo boy. US Airways is basically going all-in with these moves. They’re going full Ryanair on their customers, and I’m certain we’ll see similar moves by the other majors. This is a code red, defcon 12, all hands on deck, every cliche you can think of move that suggests it is as bad as it’s ever been for these guys. After 9/11 we didn’t see anything close to this. During SARS we didn’t see anything close to this.
I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say (for like the 11th time in 3 months), this could be the end of the industry as we know it. It already is, really. The full-service airlines are now charging for water, shutting lounges and eliminating perks for their best frequent flyers. There’s nowhere else to go. All frills have been eliminated, and they can’t cut prices further. What would you do if you were running one of these airlines? I know what you’d do: the exact same thing. There’s nothing left to do. Well, there’s one thing left to do (and no one’s going to do it): Look at Malaysia Airlines.
Yes, Malaysia Airlines. Malaysia had a nice comfortable and profitable domestic network and a well-regarded international network until a couple of years ago. Then Air Asia came along and undercut them on price by something like 90%. Sure, Malaysia fought for a while, but in the end they did the only thing they could do: They called up Air Asia and told them they can have their stupid domestic routes (and/or shove them up their tuchus), that they were going to focus on the international business. (Mostly - they still set aside about 30% of their domestic seats for low fares…)
And so they did; and in the process created an extremely well regarded top-of-its-class international carrier. Air Asia won, and Malaysia Airlines won.
I don’t know if American would have the guts to say to JetBlue - OK, you win at JFK. The domestic routes are yours, but please feed them into our international network. Or say the same thing to Southwest in Dallas. Or for Delta to say the same to AirTran in Atlanta - you can have the domestic stuff, but let’s coordinate to get your connecting passengers to London on us.
That’s really the only option left, just as it was the only option for Malaysia. Anyone have the guts to try it?
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June 02 2008
What was shaping up to be the summer of the airline merger is now dead. US Airways and United announced that they have decided that now is not a great time to merge. Surprisingly (at least to me, and what do I know?) United was the company to call off further discussions. It looks like Delta/NW will be the only pairup before the Bush administration’s laissez-faire antitrust policies disappear (depending on who wins in November, of course).
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April 17 2008
US Airways announced its Choice Seats program where passengers can pay $5 to get an aisle or window seat in the first few rows of coach.
But that is nothing compared to the changes US Airways’ CEO say are coming down the ol’ pike. You can read Douglas Parker’s note to his employees here, but it suggests that if DL/NW goes through, they will have to merge with someone (they suggest United or American) to survive at all. And as I’ve discussed here before, the US Airways - America West merger still isn’t finished, so combining that airline with another would be a mess.
It’s going to get so much worse before it gets better in this industry. And it’s going to get much, much worse for passengers.
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February 15 2008
(Via Today in the Sky)
Politicians in Buffalo have been upset when Continental stopped flying nonstop flights from Buffalo to Albany, so the tried to convince another airline to fly the route. Under the category of “be careful what you ask for,” US Airways agreed to fly between the cities once a day. The round trip cost of the 65-minute hop? $1170.50. In fairness, US Airways says their partner Colgan Air sets their own fares, and I’m not one to say that you can’t charge what you want. Good luck with that flight…
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February 14 2008
(Thanks to View from the Wing)
US Airways is really sticking it to the man — and, in this case, you’re the man: The airline has eliminated 500 mile frequent flyer minimums for short flights so you now only earn actual miles flown. If you’re flying a bunch of connections on US Airways, you’ll be wasting your time, getting only the 82 miles between New York and Philadelphia. Bleh.
Gary over at View from the Wing also adds that this does not mean that it’s all over for frequent flyer programs, and I couldn’t agree with him more. The best pieces of advice I can give about trying to use your frequent flyer miles are to:
1) Do your homework first, then call the airline, especially for international trips. Know which partners fly between your two cities, and know where they make connections. I helped a friend book tickets to Hawaii recently and, using Delta miles, there are dozens and dozens of possible ways of going (nonstop on CO, from LAX on Continental, through Detroit or Minneapolis or Seattle on Northwest, a bunch of cities on Delta, Seattle on Alaska. Plus, you need to check all of the various connections TO those departure cities.) Yes, it’s time consuming. But getting a free ticket to Hawaii is worth an hour of your time. International travel is even more complex, but generally offers availability if you are willing to check the myriad connections available to you. I won’t bore you with how I booked my free ticket to Kiev…)
2) Call back tomorrow. Availability changes all the time — daily. More than daily. You have to try again tomorrow. Keep calling. This nearly always results in a ticket for you. You’re not annoying them. For international travel, these calls could take an hour. I know, it’s annoying. But after roughly 25 hours trying to get 2 business class tickets to Sri Lanka a few years back, I felt felt good when I actually got them (beats spending $14,000 on them). Be patient. And persistent.
Good luck…
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December 13 2007
(Thanks to View from the Wing)
Taking a page from universally-beloved Ticketmaster, US Airways has added a $5 fee for bookings made on its own website. It’s essentially a fare increase couched as a service fee, which is nonsense, and I hope the FTC cracks down on this. If you’re going to book on US Airways, consider using Priceline (of all things), which does not charge a service fee (if you haven’t used Priceline in a while, they primarily do regular bookings now, not the old name-your-price thing).
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October 26 2007
It’s rare to hear airline execs (or executives anywhere, really) talk openly about problems they’re experiencing, which is why this is rather refreshing: A US Airways president said that the operation of their international flights from Philadelphia have been "very bad" because of congestion at the airport’s gates. Sure, he was saying it because the airline is annoyed at airport officials for not helping them expand their (profitable) international operations there, but still - rare to hear someone say that they provided terrible service. On the plus side, US Airways had a great quarter.
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October 04 2007
US Airways has been trying to get out of Pittsburgh gracefully for some time now (but they keep pulling me back in!), but it looks like the nail is in the proverbial coffin: the carrier announced that it will shrink mainline service from 31 daily flights at the airport down to 22, and regional affiliate flights from 77 to 46. They’ll drop service altogether to a bunch of cities, including Chicago and Denver. They’ve lost more than $40 million at the hub over the past year, so this move is no shock.
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May 24 2007
For the second time in 6 months, US Airways has been cited for allowing a passenger to get drunk on a flight to New Mexico. That wouldn’t normally be a problem but, also for the second time, the passenger was arrested for DUI while driving home after the flight landed (he would’ve had to be REALLY drunk to drive home before the flight landed). New Mexico has cracked down on in-flight drinking after a US Airways passenger killed himself and 5 others in a DUI-related crash in November (he had been drinking on a the flight, then drove home drunk). The State of New Mexico told US Airways it was no longer allowed to serve alcohol on flights to the state without a New Mexico liquor license. The carrier has since received a temporary license.
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US Airways to Remove Movies from Domestic Flights