For the first time in a long time, I didn’t do any travel or post any reviews in the last month. However, July 2024 was a crazy month in the aviation news arena. From IT outages to route cuts to ultra-low-cost carriers (ULCCs) making a pivot to premium products we got a little bit of everything. I promise that there are already multiple trips on the books for August so we should hopefully have new reviews uo soon. For now, let’s dive in to the July 2024 monthly recap below.
Crowdstrike Outage Cripples the Travel Industry
The biggest story of the month is in regards to a Crowdstrike IT outage that crippled the travel industry as a whole. We saw airlines cancel or delay thousands of flights in a single weekend and hotels that couldn’t process payments or make room keys.
Delta IT Melts Down After Crowdstrike Outage
While the outage itself should have been the major story, things quickly turned to focus on Delta. The Atlanta based carrier experienced a full blown meltdown due to the aftereffects of the outage. Delta cancelled thousands of flights stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers over a five day stretch. Things finally began to turn a corner six days after the initial outage, just as CEO Ed Bastian jetted off to Paris for the Olympics.
Southwest Entered the 21st Century by Announcing Assigned Seating
Southwest made the largest change in the airline’s 50+ year history by announcing they would eliminate their cattle-call boarding system and instead moved to assigned seating. If that wasn’t welcome news enough for travelers, the airline will also be installing extra-legroom seating on its planes. It’s still yet to be determined what exactly this will look like but it’s a step in the right direction.
Spirit Announces New Fare Bundles Aimed at Premium Travelers
Spirit, yes THAT Spirit, announced plans to introduce new fare bundles in August which effectively gives the airline a First Class, extra-legroom Economy, and Economy cabins across all of its jets. Fares won’t go on sale for a couple of weeks but the bundles are pretty impressive. The airline that once branded itself as the “Home of the Bare Fare” has now made a significant premium pivot.
Coming in August: Six Flights, Five Airports, One Day. Mileage Running for British Airways Tier Points
As I mentioned above, August is the month that I finally get to do some flying! A friend and I are off on an insane, six-segment British Airways Tier Point run. While I’m excited about reviewing some lounges and in-flight experiences, only time will tell whether or not we can actually fly our itinerary as scheduled. You can follow along on Twitter/X for real time updates during the trip.
Summary
While July was all news and no travel, I’m looking forward to changing that in August. I’ve got a few more trips that need to be finalized between now and the end of the year as well so stay tuned!
