A rental car employee went viral after showing a car returned after hours with the windows left down in the rain — and a full plate of spaghetti sitting on the passenger seat. A $9,000 cleanup bill may sound inflated, but between water damage, stains, odor, remediation and loss of use, this is exactly the kind of after-hours return that can get expensive fast.
American Airlines has struck a deal with the PS terminals to offer a complimentary use to ConciergeKey members.
News and notes from around the interweb: Charlotte airport staffer stole $5,000 in jewelry from a passenger’s luggage and sold it on Facebook. Their defense? ‘I didn’t steal it, I found it’ (cough) but it still didn’t belong to them and they still sold it, it seems. Court documents said a woman reported that multiple pieces of diamond-encrusted David Yurman jewelry were stolen from her suitcase during a layover April 11 at Charlotte Douglas International Airport. The jewelry was valued at about $5,000, documents said… In the days after the initial report, detectives said they found a social media account, “Alonys Garcia,” listing every piece of jewelry the woman reported stolen and selling it as a bundled item…Reyes-Garcia claimed he found the jewelry in the secure baggage area. Two cases of Legionnaires’ disease linked to…
Citi Strata Elite arrives in a surprisingly premium package, but the real value is what the card earns. The current offer delivers 75,000 points and credits worth up to $1,200 in the first year, and its points now transfer to American Airlines AAdvantage.
Spirit Airlines’ collapse has become a political Rorschach test: one side says blocked mergers killed it, another says deregulation and Wall Street did, and some are using it to argue for nationalizing the airlines entirely. They are all reaching too hard. Spirit’s failure says less about capitalism failing than about what happens when policy tries to over-engineer an industry.
British Airways is cutting one of the last visual cues that Club Europe is supposed to be business class. Starting this week, the airline is removing fabric headrest covers from intra-Europe business class seats — a small premium touch BA says will save cleaning time and help punctuality.
A photo of a Singapore Airlines flight attendant assisting a passenger’s foot has gone viral with claims that first class includes on-demand foot rubs or “foot cleansing.” The image may be real, but the service almost certainly is not: this looks far more like first aid or assistance with an injured passenger than some secret Singapore Airlines luxury perk
American Airlines pilots union leadership is no longer just criticizing management — it is openly encouraging the board to consider takeover or merger paths after United’s CEO publicly floated a deal. The union says American lacks the vision, culture change and operational progress needed to fix itself quickly enough, and that “any path forward” should be on the table.
British Airways managed to damage a 787-10 on the ground at Heathrow. Engineering steps were placed under the aircraft, then the jet was fueled, got heavier, settled lower, and sank onto them. The Chicago flight was canceled, passengers waited packed on buses for 90 minutes, and BA may now owe roughly $352,000 in delay compensation before hotels and meals.
Palm Beach County and the Trump Organization have reached an agreement on the use of Donald Trump’s name to rename Palm Beach International airport for the President. They will vote on it on Tuesday.
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 »
