Hilton wants Diamond breakfast guests to feel recognized, but some properties are doing it with table signs that publicly mark who is getting the elite benefit. Some guests love the VIP treatment; others feel like they’ve been labeled as coupon users before the eggs even arrive.
oston Logan now has a front door 20 miles from the airport. Travelers can check bags, clear TSA in Framingham, and then ride a bus straight to the secure side of Logan near the gates — the first remote airport screening facility in North America, and a glimpse of how crowded airports may grow without forcing everyone through the same terminal chaos.
United’s “Agent on Demand” is supposed to replace the airport customer service desk when travel goes sideways. But after a canceled flight in Atlanta, one passenger says the remote agent offered “nothing,” sent her to the 800 number, and could be heard talking about her while the call was still live.
United’s big MileagePlus changes are now live, and the program is plainly moving more of its value behind a co-brand card: faster mileage-earning, cheaper United award prices, and better access to saver inventory for cardholders, while non-cardmembers earn less. United and Chase are raising the upfront incentives just as the airline makes a credit card matter more than ever to getting the best value out of MileagePlus.
fter more than 17 hours in the air from Dubai, Emirates flight 213 reached Miami in thunderstorms, missed one landing for windshear and poor visibility, then got sent around again when the runway was not clear. That second go-around turned “minimum fuel” into a Mayday call.
Airports still have a strange kind of magic: permission to be untethered, drink coffee too early, watch planes, people-watch, and feel the trip begin before you board. The problem is that modern airports keep burying that romance under TSA lines, crowding, lounge waitlists, bad terminals, and $18 beers — so the real luxury is finding a way to escape the chaos.
A passenger on a Shenzhen Airlines Boeing 737 noticed something wrong with the wing, photographed it, and showed the cabin crew — and after landing, the jet was pulled from service for maintenance. It appears to have been a loose or detached flap rail fairing, the kind of issue passengers may see from the cabin before anyone in the cockpit can.
American Airlines is not known for Delta-style bidding wars when flights are oversold. But on a Philadelphia–Athens flight, the airline reportedly kept raising the offer until three passengers got $4,500 each to delay their Greece trip by one day — an unusually rich payout from a carrier that normally stops bidding much earlier.
Reclining is allowed. Repeatedly body-slamming your seatback for two hours because the guy behind you is tall is not. That is what passengers say happened on a United flight from Denver to Chicago, while the 6’7″ man behind him somehow stayed completely unbothered while a flight attendant allowed it to continue.
Delta’s “eco-conscious” inflight cutbacks look even worse when the utensils start melting. Plus: Southwest’s once-unthinkable layoffs continue, American’s cabin cleaning misses another seatback surprise, and Spirit gets its own ballad.
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 »
