Airlines

JetBlue makes it easier to earn perks and status

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New York-based JetBlue Airways has revamped its True Blue loyalty program, making it easier for both frequent and infrequent flyers to earn incremental perks and attain status with the airline.

You can get into all the nitty gritty details here. But basically, your ‘points’ and loyalty are now measured and accrued in “Tiles.”

And JetBlue customers can earn some desirable perks, even if they don’t fly very often.

In the new program, one tile is awarded for every $100 in qualifying purchases on JetBlue, its associated programs such as JetBlue Vacations, and on flights on its partner airline, American Airlines.

One tile is also earned for every $1,000 spent on any JetBlue credit card.

Every time a TrueBlue member earns 10 (until reaching the airline’s Mosaic status at 50 tiles) they get to pick from a menu of rewards or perks, including early boarding, access to priority screening, a free alcoholic drink each flight, or bonus points. And once selected, a picked perk is valid from the date it’s earned through the end (12/31) of the following year.

JetBlue’s Mosaic tiered status program is also updated.

JetBlue’s tiered status program, called Mosaic, is now also updated with four levels.

Travelers reach Mosaic 1 status with 50 tiles, Mosaic 2 status with 100 tiles, Mosaic 3 status with 150 tiles, and Mosaic 4 status with 250 titles. And, as you may imagine, each tier comes with a better set of perks.

The basic set of perks, granted with Mosaic 1 status (50 tiles) includes:

  • First Two Checked Bags Free.
  • Beer, Wine & Liquor.
  • Even More® Space at Check-In.
  • Same-Day Switches.
  • Early Boarding.
  • Priority Security.
  • Dedicated Check-In.
  • Dedicated Support Line and Priority Chat Assistance.
  • Heathrow Express Upgrade.

The Mosaic 2 tier (100 tiles) grants all of the above perks, plus the ability to book upgraded Even More Space seats during booking.

Mosaic 3 (150 tiles) adds four certificates that let you upgrade from Core to Mint seats.

And the Mosaic 4 tier throws in two more upgrade-to-Mint certificates. Plus 4 one-way BLADE airport helicopter transfers between Manhattan and JFK or Newark (EWR) airports.

And as an added bonus, each time your move up a Mosaic level, there’s another pack of perks to choose from. And that list includes a waiver of the $125 per flight fee to jet with a pet. Which will be very popular.

Are consumers happy with the travel industry?

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The American Customer Satisfaction Index just released its 2023 Travel Study, which ranks airlines, hotels, car rentals, and online travel agencies on customer satisfaction. 

For this report, more than 10,500 customers were interviewed via email over the past year and asked to evaluate their recent experiences with a wide variety of travel companies.

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Alaska Airlines gets the best ranking, rising 8% to an ACSI score of 81 (on a scale of 100).

American and Southwest Airlines each rose 1%, to an ASCI score of 78. United Airlines stayed steady with a 77 score, but scores dipped a bit for Delta Air Lines and Jet Blue.

As you can see from the chart below, airlines, car rental companies, and online travel agencies each made 1% gains in overall customer satisfaction, but satisfaction rose 6% for hotels in general.

JetBlue Flying Next To: Amsterdam.

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JetBlue’s 3rd European Destination? Amsterdam.

JetBlue announced on Tuesday that it will be adding Amsterdam to its list of international flight destinations.

Service will start between New York’s JFK International Airport and Amsterdam Schiphol sometime “late this summer,” according to a JetBlue statement. And flights between Boston Logan and Schiphol are “to follow,” subject to government operating authority.

JetBlue already flies to London’s Heathrow and Gatwick Airports and will begin flying to Paris in June.

As with its other European flights, the daily Amsterdam route will be served by the carrier’s Airbus A321 Long Range (LR) single-aisle aircraft, which has 114 economy seats (“Core”) and 24 new fully lie-flat private suites with sliding doors.

FAA Outage Causes Flight Delays & Disruption

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Late Tuesday evening, an essential piece of the aviation transportation network operated by the Federal Aviation Administration failed.

And because of that the FAA temporarily grounded all flights nationwide on Wednesday morning.

The ground stop was lifted by 8:50 am east coast time. But the fallout included more than 1,300 canceled flights and close to 10,500 delayed flights over the course of the day, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

And, as we know, when that happens, it can take a few days for flight schedules to fully get back in order.

What went wrong?

The FAA’s Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which provides critical safety and operational information to pilots stopped working. And without that information, it wasn’t safe for any planes to take from any airport.

After the reboot, flights resumed. And by Wednesday evening, the FAA issued a statement with some explanation of what went wrong and a reassurance that the agency wasn’t the victim of a cyber-attack. The agency also promises to ‘further pinpoint’ what went wrong, and “prevent this kind of disruption from happening again.”

“The FAA is continuing a thorough review to determine the root cause of the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system outage. Our preliminary work has traced the outage to a damaged database file. At this time, there is no evidence of a cyber attack. The FAA is working diligently to further pinpoint the causes of this issue and take all needed steps to prevent this kind of disruption from happening again.”

Now What?

Passengers whose flights were canceled are owed refunds by the airlines, even though this was an FAA-induced incident. Most airlines are waiving change fees and allowing ticketed passengers to change plans and trying to rebook passengers on other flights. If your travel plans were disrupted, be sure to see if the credit card you used to book the flight has some sort of travel delay insurance. Here are links to the Travel Alert page for many airlines.

Alaska Airlines

American Airlines

Delta Air Lines

Frontier Airlines

JetBlue

Delta Air Lines

Southwest Airlines

United Airlines

Southwest Airlines Saga Continues

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After a week of widespread cancellations and disarray in operations, many Southwest Airlines passengers are still stuck at airports around the country waiting for standby seats. Or in hotels waiting for confirmation of a flight home.

If you’re following social media and watching TV, you’ve also likely seen stories of people renting cars – sometimes with strangers – to get where they need to go.

The airline says it’s doing its best to put things right. And late Wednesday, Southwest Airlines Chief Commercial Officer, Ryan Green, took to social media to offer (more) apologies; a pledge to do “everything we can” to make things up to customers, and something more useful: fresh details about some added tools and resources that might help travelers get refunds, flight reservations, and their baggage.

Airports also are beginning to get answers and action from Southwest Airlines. Take a look at this Twitter thread from Chicago’s Midway Airport, where Southwest Airlines is the largest carrier. In addition to trying to accommodate thousands of stranded passengers, the airport has had to store and secure an incredible amount of baggage.

In the meantime, most other airlines are capping fares on many routes to accommodate those who are rebooking themselves on non-Southwest Airlines flights. But since this is still the busy holiday season, those seats are hard to come by too.

For those of you who may be stuck at an airport or know someone whose holiday plans were ruined by weather and airline meltdowns we know you’ll understand the joy this man experienced – and expressed – once he was reunited with this bag at Midway Airport.

Southwest Airlines Nightmare Continues

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Early Wednesday morning, Flightaware.com was showing almost 2500 Southwest Airlines flights canceled. That leaves thousands of passengers still stuck at airports around the country.

All other domestic airlines now have their schedules back on track since the last weekend’s bad weather. But not Southwest. The airline continues to suffer from staffing problems, software and technology failures, and other challenges.

Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan offered apologies. ( See below). And the airline is offering to cover the costs of hotels, car rentals, and tickets on other airlines in an effort to help out inconvenienced passengers.

If your plans have been ruined, here’s a link to begin filing for that reimbursement. Also be sure to check your credit card for any travel delay benefits it may offer.

The Department of Transportation has vowed to investigate.

But that isn’t really doing much right now to fix the problems and headaches this meltdown has caused. Nor will it make up for ruined holidays and family gatherings, and missed meetings, weddings, funerals, and other important events people were trying to get to.

Not only are Southwest Airlines passengers still stuck at airports all over the country, baggage is pilling up in bag claims. And many people won’t get flights home until after January 1.

Santa arrived. Many other flyers didn’t.

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No doubt about it.

For everyone except Santa and his reindeer, flying this holiday has been a mess.

There’s so much snow in upstate New York that Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF) is staying closed until at least 11 a.m. on Wednesday, December 28.

And the airport’s award-winning snow removal team is so overwhelmed with snow that is has called on other airports to help them deal with this blizzard.

“Our crews are working around the clock and @PITairport will be sending additional snow plowing equipment to assist our team,” the airport shared in a Tweet.

Southwest Airlines Meltown

Thousands of flights have been canceled and all airlines are having a tough time getting passengers and their suitcases from here to there.

But Southwest Airlines operations seem to have broken down – or frozen up – completely.

At 1 am Tuesday morning, FlightAware.com was showing more than 2,600 cancellations within, into, or out of the United States, with most of those being on Southwest Airlines alone.

The airline cancelled more than 2900 flights on Monday and has already canceled 2460 flights for Tuesday.

The next few days may get even worse.

In a media release late Monday, Southwest said, “With consecutive days of extreme winter weather across our network behind us, continuing challenges are impacting our Customers and Employees in a significant way that is unacceptable.”

The airline said “our heartfelt apologies for this are just beginning.” But it added: “As we continue the work to recover our operation, we have made the decision to continue operating a reduced schedule by flying roughly one third of our schedule for the next several days.”

But it may be more serious than that.

Tweets like this were shared Tuesday night from cities all over the country confirming that Southwest customers are being told no flights will be rebooked until after December 31.

As in “next year.”

That means that a lot of people whose flights have already been canceled are going to have to wait even longer to get on a plane.

The Department of Transportation has taken notice, calling Southwest’s rate of cancellations and delays and report of poor customer service “unacceptable” and saying it “will examine whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan.”

2023 will be profitable for airlines, despite airports “gouging” airlines

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Airline trade group IATA – the International Air Transport Association – is hosting a gathering of journalists in Geneva, Switzerland this week and laying out a wide variety of reports, predictions, and challenges.

IATA reports that in 2023, as air travel rebounds from COVID-19 restrictions, the global airline industry expects to post a small net profit of $4.7 billion, with more than 4 billion passengers taking to the skies. That’s a 0.6% net profit margin and the industry’s first profit since 2019.

In 2021 and 2022 airlines lost billions of dollars due to the pandemic.

The 2023 return to profit is a “great achievement considering the scale of the financial and economic damage caused by government-imposed pandemic restrictions,” said IATA Director General Willie Walsh. But he warned that many airlines will continue to struggle next year and into the future.

And he lashed out at airports – and their charges to airlines – as adding to the struggle.

“It’s very important that everybody understands just how fragile the recovery is,” said Walsh. “But the margins we are operating with are very small and we cannot tolerate a situation where airports in particular attempt to gouge airlines and their passengers by significant increases in airport charges. Every single cent matters.”

The Airport Industry Responds

As you might imagine, Walsh’s comments about airports don’t sit well with the airport community.

And Luis Felipe de Oliveira, the World Director General of airport trade group Airports Council International (ACI) swiftly responded to Walsh’s comments about airports and airport charges.

“Attacking industry partners does not reflect the collaborative spirit the industry needs for the common goal of providing safe, reliable, and efficient air transport,” said de Oliveira.

“Like airlines and other areas of this ecosystem, airports are businesses too and affected by cost rises in the industry outside of their control. It is a reality we’re all facing—high costs of energy, inflation, and staff shortages.”

de Oliveira noted that airports had a 49% drop in aeronautical revenues during 2020-2021. Costs have gone up, he said, while revenues are not keeping pace.

“It is important to remember that airports are infrastructure-intensive businesses—meaning they have unavoidable high fixed costs. What’s more, significant investment will be needed going forward to meet demand and transition to sustainable energy sources,” said Oliveira. “Airlines have been able to increase their tariffs during the last year, which is different from the airports that need to follow regulatory frameworks.”

In the end, “aviation is one ecosystem,” said Oliveira. “We must focus on the benefits to passengers and communities. And for this, all parts of the ecosystem need to be healthy.”

Travel Tidbits from Airports Near You

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Airlines Fined for Not Giving Refunds on Time

On Monday, the Transportation Department fined a half-dozen airlines more than $7 million for failing to provide timely refunds to customers.

The DOT said the six airlines have also now collectively paid more than half a billion dollars to people who were owed a refund due to a canceled or significantly changed flight.

Frontier Airlines is the only U.S. airline on the list. And it got the biggest fine: $2.2 million. According to the DOT, the airline has issued $222 million in refunds.

Here’s a list of the other airlines fined and the amount of refunds they are required to pay:

The fines assessed and the required refunds provided are: 

  • Air India – $121.5 million in required refunds paid and a $1.4 million penalty 
  • TAP Portugal – $126.5 million in required refunds paid and a $1.1 million penalty 
  • Aeromexico – $13.6 million in required refunds paid and a $900,000 penalty 
  • El Al – $61.9 million in required refunds paid and a $900,000 penalty 
  • Avianca – $76.8 million in required refunds paid and a $750,000 penalty 

You Can Now Take the Metro to Dulles International Airport

With the opening of the long-awaited Silver Line Metrorail station at Dulles International Airport (IAD) on Tuesday, travelers and airport employees can now take the train directly to Dulles from downtown Washington, D.C.

The new station at Dulles is connected to the main terminal by an indoor pedestrian tunnel with moving sidewalks. Transit time from Metro Center in downtown D.C. is estimated at 53 minutes. And, depending on when you ride and where you access Metrorail, the fare will be between $2 and $6. Trains will leave the Dulles Silver Line station about every 15 minutes.

Courtesy Mamava

Mamava Lactation Pod Doubles as Art Gallery

You’ve probably noticed Mamava lactation pods popping up at airports.

Now one of these pods has been installed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Located under the lobby escalators on the Museum’s ground floor, the free-to-use pod not only provides a private, comfortable space for parents to pump or breastfeed, this one doubles as a gallery space.

Courtesy Mamava

The interior of the pod features reproductions of artworks by noted artist Betye Saar, including Anticipation (1961), which depicts the artist pregnant with her third child, In the Sunflower Patch (1963), and Flight (1963), depicting the early years of her daughter’s life. There’s also a quote by Saar in the pod, in which she reflects on motherhood, birthing, and her printmaking practice. 

Great idea, right? Maybe airports will add art to their Mamava lactation pods too.

In addition to museums and airports, Mamava now has lactation pods in train stations, corporate offices, schools, hospitals, military bases, retail, universities, sports stadiums, and zoos. You can locate them with a free locator app.

JetBlue inks deal to buy Spirit Airlines

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Big news in the airline world. JetBlue is buying Spirit Airlines. Price tag: $3.8 billion.

Read these stories to learn more.