JetBlue strands passengers 100 miles from their destination, plus the first known filmed inflight meltdown from 25 years ago, a bizarre Southwest seat strategy, the psychology of elite status, and more.
Passengers on an American Airlines regional flight from the Bahamas say the trip unraveled because the pilots got into a fight after arriving, forcing a cancellation before anyone could leave. Families were kept outside in Caribbean heat for more than 90 minutes, then left to sort out hotels and transportation on their own when the airline finally called the flight off.
Chase Sapphire Reserve is now offering some hotel redemptions at 2.5 cents per point, a meaningful step up from the card’s usual “up to 2 cents” Points Boost ceiling. The best part is that these are not hard-to-find award nights: they are paid rates at premium The Edit hotels, which means cardholders can still get breakfast, upgrades if available, late checkout, and loyalty credit while using points at a higher value.
More than a quarter of the baggage scales tested at Newark airport were found to be inaccurate, and some were so bad they were taken out of service or treated every bag as overweight. That does not mean every traveler was wrongly charged, but at a major United hub where checked bag and overweight fees add up fast, the odds are high that passengers paid millions they never should have owed.
A congressman turned a hotel room air-conditioning complaint into a bizarre political rant, blaming AOC and the Green New Deal after a motion sensor shut off the A/C while he slept. Every factual claim in it, from how Maryland entered the Union to where Ronald Acuña Jr. was born, was just wrong.
Katy Perry did not have coins for the Trevi Fountain, so she dipped a credit card in the water instead — and the real question is what card she was carrying in Rome.
American Airlines has started issuing performance grades to flight attendants, using a mix of customer survey data, operational metrics, and internal compliance measures to score how they are doing. That is a meaningful shift for an airline that badly needs better onboard service, but unless those scores eventually lead to real rewards for top performers and real consequences for chronic underperformance, it will not come close to fixing the deeper problem.
Spirit is no longer just asking the government for cash to avoid liquidation. The new twist is that the airline has floated a bailout structure where taxpayers would wind up owning part of the company, turning a desperate plea for survival into a proposal to socialize losses in one of the weakest business models in U.S. aviation.
Mexico’s president flew economy to Europe on her first trip to the continent since taking office, then posted a photo of herself working from her coach seat on the way to Barcelona. Surely she’s not serving the public well by turning long-haul travel into a performance of thrift rather than getting rest of having space ot work effectively.
Air traffic control in Nashville turned a Southwest jet that was going around after an aborted landing directly into the departure path of another Southwest flight, triggering collision warnings in both cockpits. The two aircraft came within about 500 feet vertically before the crews and onboard systems avoided a far more serious outcome.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
