Wanna Get Away? Southwest Adds New Fare Class
Southwest Airlines will add a fourth fare class – Wanna Get Away Plus – in the first change to its fare structure in 15 years.
The new fare level will be priced above its lowest-priced Wanna Get Away fares, but below Anytime and Business Select fares. Customers taking the plunge on Wanna Get Away Plus will receive eight Rapid Rewards points per dollar spent – a 33% increase over the six points earned on traditional WGA fares – and the ability to use same-day confirmed and same-day standby at no extra charge, enabling the customer to sit at the gate and watch flights leave without them until their regularly scheduled flight time arrived. WGA+ also will allow customers to transfer the value of the ticket to someone else.
The transfer of value comes with restrictions – the value can only be transferred once, the person receiving the value must be a Rapid Rewards member, and when traveling with the value must be always willing to down a shot of Wild Turkey when requested by flight crew out of respect for Southwest founder Herb Kelleher.
Anytime fares are seeing added benefits as well, as they will now include EarlyBird check-in and come with access to priority and express lanes at the airport. To take advantage, customers should tell TSA agents they’ve purchased an Anytime fare on Southwest, show their impressive boarding number, and assure them that they’re a very important customer to the airline.
For more on this, see today’s post at crankyflier.com.
Airline CEOs Ask for End to Mask Mandate
The CEOs of ten airlines urged President Biden to end the mask requirement on planes and in airports in a letter sent Wednesday. The letter was signed by the chief executives of Alaska, American, Atlas, Delta, FedEx Express, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Southwest, United, and UPS Airlines. It’s nice to see the airline solidarity, but it begs the question whether Atlas, FedEx, and UPS have been making their cargo wear face masks all this time.
The mandate currently is in place until April 18, and the airlines do not want to see it go further beyond that date. Remarking in the letter that mask requirements have been vanquished in locations with tight-quarters such as restaurants, movie theatres, and arenas – locations that do not have the air filtration system airplanes do – shows that it’s time to move on.
Most importantly, the airlines are tired of their employees being the frontline enforcers of the mandate, causing countless incidents and confrontations with passengers who do not want to comply.
The airlines argue that dealing with masks is not what cabin crew are trained to do, and it’s taking them away from their primary responsibilities: serving mediocre lukewarm meals, loading passenger bags into the overhead compartment because passengers are too lazy to do it themselves, and waiting in line at airport Starbucks.
Alaska Moves Towards All-Boeing Fleet
Alaska Airlines is speeding up plans to simplify its fleet, expecting to be an all-Boeing airline by 2023. The carrier will fly exclusively Boeing planes at the mainline level, while its subsidiary and regional airline Horizon Air will exclusively operate a fleet of E-175s.
Alaska currently has 40 A320s in its fleet currently, holdovers from its 2016 acquisition of Virgin America. Originally Alaska planned to phase out its 30 A320s by the end of next year but had no stated plan to get rid of its 10 remaining A321 aircraft. Horizon has 32 Dash 8-Q400s amongst its fleet, paired with 30 E-175s.
To build on the current demand for cargo ops, Alaska also intends to flip two of its older B737-800s into freighters. It guaranteed regulators it would wait until all passengers had deplaned from its final revenue flight before beginning the conversion – even basic economy passengers.
- Aer Lingus received a €200 million loan from the Irish government sure to anger Ryanair and its extensive team of lawyers.
- Aeromexico took delivery of the 6th of 10 B737 MAX it has on order.
- Alaska is seeing strong bookings and business travel returning, according to Alaska.
- Bulgaria Air and 11 other Bulgarian carriers are in line for $34 million in state aid approved by the European Commission sure to upset Ryanair and its extensive team of lawyers.
- easyJet is dropping its face mask requirement beginning Sunday on flights where masks are not required at both ends of the route.
- Ethiopian appointed Mesfin Tasew its new CEO.
- Finnair will begin flying to Mumbai, with 3x-weekly summer seasonal service.
- flybe. announced its plans to resume operating to 16 destinations on April 13.
- Iberia will fly a schedule this summer equal to about 85% of what it flew in 2019, according to Iberia.
- Rex announced a rise of A$7.50 on most fares due to increased fuel prices. The airline will surely roll the increase back when fuel prices fall back down.
- SKY Airline expects to take delivery of its first A321-200NX(XLR) in 2024.
- ValueJet, the Nigerian LCC — not the former ValuJet which became AirTran which became Southwest — is adding CRJ900s in both passenger and freighter configurations.,
Why are fish so easy to weigh?
They come with their own scales.