September 22, 2020

Southwest Encourages the Buddy System

1 Southwest Airlines launched a promotion offering its famed Companion Pass by registering on Southwest.com. The only qualification is you have to book one round trip flight by September 24 — this Thursday — for travel by November 15. Complete that, and voila, you’ve got a companion pass valid from January 6 through February 28.

Southwest is running the promotion to try and juice bookings during a traditionally-weak period for leisure travel. With loads light between now and mid-November, the qualification period will encourage people to take a trip. Then again after the winter holidays, the January/February travel period is traditionally big for business travel. Dangling the companion pass allows Southwest to entice leisure travelers to get out of town.

Shameless Self Promo Alert: To assist you and your lucky companion on your seven week journey on Southwest, Cranky Concierge has launched a $99 Southwest Companion Special available that includes flight planning & monitoring for your qualifying flight and unlimited flight planning & monitoring on all Southwest flights when you fly with your companion for the length of the promo. But wait – there’s more! Sign up in the next 24 hours, and you’ll also receive a 2-year contract offer to be a first officer for Pakistan International Airlines. Starting salary is $100,000. No experience necessary.*

*Ok, so maybe that last part isn’t true. You can probably get that even without signing up for the Southwest Companion deal with us.


Delta Extends Change Fee Waiver to SkyMiles Awards

2 Delta Air Lines announced an extension to its no-change fee policy today, adding SkyMiles award tickets to the party.

Effective immediately, Delta has eliminated award ticket redeposit fees and reissue fees for domestic travel for all non-Basic Economy itineraries. Most notably, Delta has also eliminated its much-despised rule that all award travel is locked in 72 hours prior to departure. Changes can now be made up until departure. This option is especially useful for customers who have second thoughts about spending those 265,000 SkyMiles they spent a whole life earning for a one-way trip from Birmingham to Columbus, via Atlanta.

In addition, SkyClub and Delta Select memberships will not expire until June 30. This is great news for SkyClub members who have not had their fill of a dozen or three preflight Biscoffs. (Or is that just us?) Delta Select members will also be pleased to know that their ridiculous purchase for a nonsensical product will remain valid into next summer.


JetBlue Takes Over the Nutmeg State

3 JetBlue continues to add new routes at a torrid pace so it can try to find bright spots of leisure travel demand in a generally bleak world.

Today, JetBlue has turned its attention to Connecticut, with the airline adding four new routes out of Hartford (BDL) to the West Coast and Mexico. BDL has always been a popular airport for departing aircraft as people wanting to leave Hartford are never in short supply. The problem is the arrivals — getting people to willfully fly into Hartford is always a challenge.

The new routes out of Hartford see JetBlue expanding with three cross-country routes to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. American has been serving Hartford from LA, though it remains to be seen when or if that will return. Hartford has no other service west of Denver. JetBlue will begin all three routes on December 18. Cancun service will begin November 18.


American Launches Refundable International Fares

4 The race to scrounge up whatever air travel demand there is continues, with American loading inexpensive refundable fares to Asia, Europe, and South America.

The fares for coach travel were actually filed last week, but they have already been extended for purchase through the end of September — excluding Basic Economy, of course — for travel any time. The fares may not be the cheapest offered in the market, but they are significantly less than the price tag that normally accompanies a refundable fare — especially for transoceanic travel. For example, a roundtrip from Los Angeles to London early next year was pricing at under $1,000 at the refundable rate, which is actually refundable minus a $100 “administrative fee.”

We’ve recently seen a disruption in the airline industry with change fees disappearing on domestic travel. This trial balloon from AA could be a preview of the next to fall… or it could just be a desperate attempt to instill confidence so skeptical travelers will feel comfortable booking international travel again.


No Tasman Travel Bubble in 2020

5 Air New Zealand CEO Greg Foran says that Australia and New Zealand will not be forming a travel bubble until March 2021 at the earliest. 

The governments of both counties had planned a travel bubble to allow quarantine-free travel between both countries. Rising cases have scuttled the plans for now, with Victoria seeing a spike in cases along with an increase in New Zealand. Australia is insisting on at least 28-consecutive days of no community transmission of the virus before considering an international bubble.

In the meantime, New Zealand is considering a bubble with its neighbor the Cook Islands. The Cook Islands reopened its borders this week for its own residents stuck in New Zealand.


Airline Potpourri

  • Aeromexico has received permission from U.S. Bankruptcy Court to revise its agreement with its aircraft lessors to save costs.
  • Cathay Pacific is launching a 12-week, 2x-weekly cargo flight to Pittsburgh. The flights will presumably be filled with Terrible Towels.
  • Delta will resume long-haul international service from Minneapolis/St. Paul with its flight to Amsterdam returning on October 25.
  • Liard Air in Canada has added a King 300 to its fleet.
  • Norwegian, SAS, & Widerøe had their loan guarantees extended two months to the end of 2020 by the Norwegian government.
  • TUI has cut its winter capacity to approximately 40% of last winter’s capacity figures.

Andrew’s Moment of Levity

My e-mail password got hacked again. This is the third time in four weeks I’ve had to rename my first grandkid.