Cranky Flier

Twenty. Five. Years. A quarter of a century. It’s hard to believe that I’ve just this year passed the point where more than half my life has been lived post-9/11. Kids who were born on that fateful day can now rent a car. There are a lot of ways to say it… this happened a long time ago now. But for those of us who lived through that day — maybe even more so for those of us working in this industry — the memory is still just as vivid as it was back in 2001. There

After a hurried run through the Big Island thanks to losing a day from our previous fiasco getting to Hawaiʻi, I was hopeful the rest of the trip would go smoothly. It did not start off that way when I went to check in for our flight from Hilo to Kahului for the second part of the trip. After pulling up the app, I was greeted by a message saying our reservations had been canceled. Crap. My first thought was that the agent screwed up yet again when we didn’t take the first flights

Alaska Airlines is holding a big media and investor day on September 29, and that means it’s a rare time when I will be in person with my two co-hosts of The Air Show — Brian Sumers and Jon Ostrower. Instead of just taking a photo to commemorate this momentous occasion, we’ve decided to do our first ever LIVE show that evening at 7:30pm where we talk about all the news that Alaska and Hawaiian released that day. Get Tickets Now We quietly announced we were doing this l

With American recently announcing its European-focus for the deployment of its A321XLR, I couldn’t help but wonder if this is the best use of these airplanes. I know Europe is sexy, but I couldn’t stop thinking that for American, Latin America would be a better place to start. And then I started going down the data rabbit hole. We know that American’s initial plan for the XLR was to put it on the New York/JFK to LAX and San Francisco transcon routes to replace the 102-seat A

Hello, Seattle! We are doing our first ever LIVE taping of The Air Show podcast, and you can join us in the audience. We’ll be interviewing Alaska President Shane Tackett on stage right after the airline’s media and investor day on September 29. There will be plenty to discuss, and as an added bonus, Boeing has given us access to the company’s Customer Experience Center for the event. Buy tickets today before they sell out. Southwest Announces Entry Into Lounge Gam

JetBlue has had a fantastic premium product for more than decade, Mint. The problem is, Mint is a fully-flat bed that doesn’t work for most of the airline’s operation. JetBlue could justify it on money-makers like LAX to JFK, but it certainly couldn’t put it on Boston to Nashville. The “core” fleet is filled with coach seats that have great legroom but limited ability to generate extra revenue. That has been changing, and it now changes even more with the BlueFi

After writing up my recent 14-hour delay on Hawaiian, GS left a comment asking about the average length of delay for each airline as opposed to just the percentage that are delayed. At the time, I responded “it’s a pretty large and annoying project” for me to pull all those flight-level details, but then I decided… ah, what the heck. Let’s do it. I snuggled up with Anuvu on-time data one night, and now it’s time to talk about the results. I didn’t want t

It’s a day ending in “y” so nobody should be surprised that United CEO Scott Kirby is making news once again. This time, he’s talking about how American de-hubbing O’Hare would actually be great news for the people of Chicagoland. It may sound crazy, but he’s right… as long as you count “great news” to mean more destinations and nothing else. Even in this universe, however, it’s not realistic. Welcome to the latest installment of Beyond

United Adds All the Destinations United Airlines has made its summer route announcements into an annual thing, and the airline did not disappoint this year. At a fancy unveiling in Newark, the carrier announced ten new international destinations, which feature eight places not currently served by any U.S. airline. All 10 are in either Asia or Europe, and not surprisingly, eight will depart from EWR giving customers even more options in fleeing the greater Newark area. From Newark (starred

Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts You want more on American? Brian Sumers and I go in-depth this week on the airline’s recent organization changes, the addition of premium seats, and finally bringing back in-seat video. Listen in now. It’s definitely a choice for American to announce its summer 2027 plans two days after United, but it’s probably not one I would have made. United’s blockbuster adds, including 10 new citi

With Cranky Dorkfest coming up, and the waitlist for the LAX ramp visit growing, I’ve been asked by some how they could have learned about the event more quickly. The simple answer is that there are two options, and one of them just became more useful. You can check crankyflier.com manually You can subscribe Subscribing used to be just a single email in your inbox every time something new gets posted, but now there are more options, and all of them are free. You can conti

United loves a big summer announcement, and sometimes it doesn’t live up to the very high levels of hype. But this year? It not only lives up to the hype, but it exceeds it. United is putting its XLRs to good use, but it’s doing a whole lot more than that as it continues to try to push to find gold in new cities that others haven’t tried. Overall, the airline will add 10 new cities, six of which aren’t served from anywhere in the US today. It will have a total of 14

It turns out that regional powerhouse airBaltic has been having a tough time lately. Because of that, the airline is going to shrink and shuffle its priorities. They can spin this however they’d like, but the reality is that winter is just terrible for European airlines, and that is the crux of the issue here. AirBaltic has been a darling of Europe for many years. It’s based in Riga, Latvia, and it was one of the early operators of the A220. With this new fleet, it had big gro

I was solo on the podcast again this week, but instead of a guest host, I interviewed Southwest COO Andrew Watterson. Yes, he was on the show earlier this year, but a lot has happened since then. Tune in to hear about how the airline is going to fix its on-time problem, what the plans are with the MAX 7, and a little talk about Andrew’s recent change in responsibilities. Listen on Spotify   |   Listen on Apple Podcasts Delta and Aeromexico Win in Court

Remember that saga from earlier this year where I had a tough time using my Alaska/Hawaiian companion fare but finally got it worked out? That was for a long-planned family vacation in Hawaiʻi. Yes, I was just there a month earlier, but that was for work. I know, you’re thinking, “this’ll be another boring Hawaiian trip report,” but you’re wrong. Pretty much everything went wrong on the way out, and we never even ended up on the airline. Hawaiian really screwed this

American’s transition to a premium airline took another very big step forward today as it has decided to reverse course. Not only will the airline be bringing back in-seat video on the domestic mainline fleet — eventually — but it is also going to add more extra legroom seating. This move to put screens in each seat is symbolically very important, even if the timing is rather odd. After all, the airline is just now getting around to removing the screens from its final p

I’m back from vacation, and as tempting as it was to write up my trip report straight away thanks to a 14-hour delay to kick things off, there was news from while I was gone that I want to talk about first. American, now finally trying to fix itself, made some moves in the management ranks while I was on the beach. On the surface, it looks like an airline trying to take some actual action, but going just a little bit deeper, I don’t feel nearly as positive. Instead, this still looks

It was twenty years ago today that I logged in at crankyflier.blogspot.com and introduced myself to… well, I guess the few family and friends who knew that I was going to start writing about the airline industry and not really anybody else. It’s been quite a ride since those early days when I still had a full-time job and was just doing this on the side. Who knew it would turn into the most influential and important blog ever to be written about anything in the history of the world?

Air Canada goes Private Equity Air Canada is selling a 25% stake in its Aeroplan loyalty program to a group of well-intentioned and customer-loving individuals from Blackstone and Canadian pension fund La Caisse for a cool $2 billion. This puts the valuation of the program(me) at $8 billion, which its awfully high when compared to what the carrier currently holds in poutine futures. Air Canada says it will retain control of the program (for now…we assume) and it will use the funds to

Allegiant’s Revenue and Profit Was Up Allegiant finally announced its Q2 earnings, and the carrier posted $158 million in EBITDA in its first earnings since the close of its merger with Sun Country on May 13. The two carriers combined for $943.5 million in operating revenue, including $776 million for Allegiant alone, a record for G4 and 16% higher than last year despite capacity being down nearly 7%. The carrier says air-related ancillary revenue stayed flat, and its increase in rev