Delta to Retire Its 777s, Close Cincinnati Pilot Base
1 It was a busy day on Virginia Avenue at Delta’s Atlanta headquarters as the airline made two big announcements on Thursday, both designed to cut costs.
First, Delta announced in an internal memo that it would be retiring its fleet of Boeing 777 jets by the end of 2020. Delta’s 777 fleet flies its longest-range routes including Atlanta-Johannesburg and Los Angeles-Sydney. It will now rely on the A350 to carry the weight.
Delta is currently running through about $50 million in cash per day and has refunded nearly $1.2 billion to customers since the virus outbreak. The retirement of the 18 B777s in its fleet will be another step by the airline to reduce its overall footprint and save on costs. With 14 A350s coming in as part of the airline’s LATAM investment, the time is right to walk away from excess capacity. This is an easy option since it’s such a small fleet. We’ll be covering this move in more detail on crankyflier.com next week.
The retirement of the 777 combined with the pending retirement of the MD88/90 series will leave the airline with a majority of its fleet flying Airbus, a shocking development considering before its merger with Northwest a decade ago, Delta exclusively flew Boeing aircraft.
In other cost-cutting moves, Delta will be closing its pilot base in Cincinnati, as the airline will have an excess of 7,000 pilots — half its workforce — when the outbreak ends due to shrinking demand. Delta has maintained a base at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport (CVG) since 1987, shortly after it established it’s now-shuttered hub at the airport.
Good Things Come to Those Who Wait: JetBlue Announces TrueBlue Mosaic Updates
2 JetBlue may be lagging other airlines, but on Thursday it finally shared updates and adjustments for its TrueBlue Mosaic elite members in response to the virus outbreak.
Similar to other airlines, JetBlue will be extending elite status for one year, so Mosaic members (the lone elite tier at JetBlue) will retain their status through all of 2021. Additionally, JetBlue has reduced the qualification requirements by 50% going forward. This means qualifying for Mosaic will only require 7,500 flight points or 15 segments combined with 6,000 flight points.
Perhaps most interesting is that JetBlue will allow all current elites to give Mosaic status to one person, effective for one year — June 15, 2020 through June 15, 2021.
As discussed previously, with American offering up to 5,000 bonus AAdvantage miles for booking travel for 2020 and Southwest offering double Rapid Reward points for travel this year, the dramatic downturn in demand is going to lead to the airlines duking it out with incenives to book and stay loyal — and JetBlue is taking a large step in essentially doubling the ranks of its elites in one fell swoop.
Lastly, in an attempt to drum up bookings and cash, JetBlue is offering double miles on bookings for all customers, not just Mosaic elites. To qualify, travel must be booked by June 15 and completed by January 4. For Blue Basic fares, you an earn two points per dollar (vs. the usual one point). For Blue fares and above, including Mint, it is six points per dollar (vs. the usual three points).
Qatar’s Generous “Travel with Confidence” Guarantee
3 In order to encourage people to return to the air, Qatar Airways is offering customers loads of flexibility for travel booked by September 30 to be completed by the end of 2020.
Customers who book on Qatar and choose to change their plans have the following options:
- You can hold onto your ticket value for two years from the date of issuance, so you can travel at a later date
- You can exchange your ticket for a future travel credit, and get a further 10% bonus
- You can make unlimited changes to the travel dates and destinations free of charge; not just that, but you can change the origin to another city within the same country, or can change the destination to fly to anywhere within a 5,000 mile radius of your original destination (bolding is ours).
- You can swap your ticket for Qmiles, at a rate of one cent (USD) per mile
- If your flight gets cancelled you can receive a cash refund, no questions asked
- If your flight is cancelled and you don’t want a cash refund, you are permitted to choose one US destination that Qatar will serve for one-year from Doha and you can pilot the inaugural flight with CEO Akbar Al Baker.
The last one, of course, is not real. But amazingly, the bolded one is real. Qatar will permit you to book travel to one location, and change to any location that it is within a 5,000 mile radius of the destination. This is both a very generous offer and one rife to be taken advantage of by mileage runners in spite of the worldwide pandemic.
The 5,000 mile radius offers potential Qatar customers all sorts of options if they want to change their travel plans. For context, Paris to Beijing is almost exactly 5,000 miles — so if you had travel booked in Qatar to one of those cities, you could essentially choose any Qatar destination in-between the two and make the change free of-charge.
One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Hub? Wizz Air Looks to Build Up Gatwick
4 As many airlines abandon their operations at London’s Gatwick airport (LGW), European low-cost carrier Wizz Air sees an opportunity. Wizz Air currently serves 56 destinations from its hub at London/Luton (LTN), but has been looking to bolster its operation at Gatwick for some time.
EasyJet is currently has the largest operation at both Luton and Gatwick with Wizz Air’s 56 destinations giving it the second-largest operation at Luton. Gatwick, long-favored by low-cost carriers and leisure travelers is seeing Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, Norwegian and others reduce or entirely remove their LGW operations, opening the door for Wizz Air to up its presence at the airport.
“We’ve been looking at Gatwick for a long time and we absolutely have an ambition to build a base there,” Chief Executive Officer Jozsef Varadi said. Varadi went on to say that the airline would only make a move if it were able to purchase slots at Gatwick — that leasing them would not be an option,.
The Bright Side: American to Return Parked Embraer 145s & 175s to Service
5 Envoy Air, American’s fully-owned subsidiary, will be bringing all of its 76-seat Embraer 175s and 50-seat ERJ145s back into service that had been parked due to the virus outbreak beginning June 3.
Many of the aircraft will be replacing larger planes on routes to help AA right-size its operation and control costs. But getting these planes in the air and out of makeshift taxiway parking lot is another sign that perhaps air travel is creeping back on an upswing after hitting rock bottom in the last 30 days — or perhaps, if pilot contract limitations allow, there will just be less work for the bigger airplanes in the fleet.
Notably, this includes the 20 175s operated by Compass, an airline which was shut down in May. Those airplanes will be transfered to American’s wholly-owned subsidiary Envoy.
Airline Potpourri
- Air New Zealand plans to resume service to Shanghai/Pudong (PVG) on May 31
- Azul will defer delivery of 59 Embraer aircraft
- Brussels Airlines plans to resume flying with a reduced schedule on June 15 to several short-haul destinations from its Brussels (BRU) hub.
- Flydubai plans to resume operations on June 5 to seven destinations from its Dubai (DXB) hub
- Gol will receive $412 million in cash and credits from Boeing as compensation for the grounding of the 737 MAX.
- Pobeda, the LCC subsidiary of Aeroflot plans to return service to 73 domestic destinations on June 1
- United REALLY doesn’t want to fly to Sun Valley, ID (SUN) as it has submitted another exemption request to the DOT to allow it to suspend service from June 20 through September 2
- Virgin Atlantic will add a second daily frequency to Tel Aviv (TLV) from London/Heathrow beginning in March of 2021
Andrew’s Moment of Levity
John Travolta tested negative for Coronavirus over the weekend. It turns out it was just Saturday Night Fever.