A Boeing slowdown, a credit card crackdown, and a hidden fees showdown: Airline news roundup
The Biden administration is going after airline credit cards for being an alleged slight-of-fiscal-hand. Lufthansa called Boeing “annoying” because it’s shipping out planes too slowly. And a certain former president’s very fancy plane experienced a minor collision.
Take a moment to catch up on what’s been happening in the world of airlines.
Biden’s crackdown on credit card perks turns to airline loyalty programs
That airline credit card in your wallet may not be as financially savvy as you think — which is why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau held a hearing to call out what it said were deceptive practices behind the plastic.
Boeing’s problems are ‘extremely annoying’ to the CEO of Germany’s largest airline
Another day, another airline CEO publicly grumbling about how long they’re having to wait on unfulfilled orders from Boeing. This time, it was Carsten Spohr of Lufthansa expressing some tight-lipped annoyance at the planemaker, in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung.
American, Delta and other airlines are suing the government to keep the fees they charge hidden
In April, the Department of Transportation told U.S. airlines that they would need to start disclosing all of the fees customers need to pay to buy a plane ticket. Now the airlines are suing to block that rule.
Boeing delivered its fewest planes in two years
Boeing’s orders and deliveries page on its website says that the company delivered 24 planes to customers last month — the fewest since February 2022. Sixteen of those deliveries were the troubled 737 Max models. While the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says Boeing can only make 38 of them a month, it has struggled to make even 10 in that timeframe.
Donald Trump’s Boeing plane hit another plane
The latest Boeing plane running into turbulence? It belongs to Donald Trump. The former U.S. president’s private Boeing 757 ran into another plane on the runway at West Palm Beach International Airport on Sunday. Nobody was injured in the accident.
Uber’s new shuttle service sounds a lot like a bus route
Though Uber is usually associated with for-hire vehicles that will take you from one place of your choosing to another place of your choosing, the company just unveiled a new service that might sound familiar to the car-free among us.
The FAA is giving United Airlines some breathing room after its turbulent March
United Airlines got a bit of good news this week. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told the carrier that it can have more freedom to design new routes and add new planes to its fleet. Bloomberg reports that “after a careful review and discussion about the proactive safety steps United has taken to date,” the company told employees in a memo that the restrictions had been lifted.