Dirty Plane Complaints Are Stacking Up Against United Airlines And Passengers Won’t Stay Silent [Roundup] – View from the Wing

News and notes from around the interweb:

CleanPlus.

@united This plane is disgustingly dirty. pic.twitter.com/TzhpzkOOeh

— Soul Pope (@The_David_S) September 28, 2024

@united thanks for not cleaning the plane on UA2310 and thanks for the gum on my seatbelt which ruined my pants. #CustomerService @nypost pic.twitter.com/J3GNQgvuVA

— SoHoScott (@SoHoScott22) September 28, 2024

250 free Qatar Airways Avios for joining Marriott Bonvoy
In the Eric Adams mess, don’t forget that Turkish Airlines is a state-controlled carrier.

Gary Leff, who runs the travel blog View from the Wing, noted that Turkish Airlines will sell excess seats for cheap to bring more people to and through the country.

“Their interest is broader than just the air travel component,” Leff said. “They want to bring tourism dollars to Turkey. They want to expose people to Turkey, give people a positive view of Turkey.”

Also, that there are other ways to sit up front besides graft, I also mentioned stacking Chase and AARP discounts during a British Airways business class sale.

Gary Leff, a veteran mileage guru who writes the View from the Wing blog, said Adams could have found relatively low-cost ways to travel comfortably—without resorting to the alleged bribes. He would have steered Adams to an airline like La Compagnie, the all-business class French carrier that often offers discounted tickets nonstop from New York to Paris or Nice. Or, better yet, Leff would have recommended that Adams play the credit-card mileage games.

“Given the risk that is borne out in this case, certainly it would have been more strategic to pay attention to his points,” Leff said.

I believe that Southwest Airlines has largely maxed out their model of go-it-alone without partnerships, distribute fares almost exclusively yourself, and operate a single cabin with single fleet type … and the inevitable consequence is becoming far more like other mature, less successful carriers.

Open seating and short domestic flights — Gary Leff at viewfromthewing.com says these hallmarks have kept Southwest Airlines’ ticket prices low and customers loyal until the last few years.

“Southwest has found that they reached the limit of their model to a large degree. And that was really accelerated by the pandemic,” Leff said.

…Southwest’s changes could alienate their diehard customers, especially if the company becomes just another airline in the flock of airlines said Leff at viewfromthewing.com.

“The U.S. airline industry is largely homogenized, one that doesn’t have a lot of product differentiation today,” he said. Leff explained this is what happens when an industry consolidates — the players in it take on the same strategies.

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Happy birthday.
Southwest Airlines laid out their new plan at investor day on Thursday and put their no cabin on display.