Air Peace says it will restart once-monthly Boeing 777 flights from Lagos to Antigua and Barbados starting May 24 — a schedule that doesn’t work for vacations, business trips, or even roundtrips. And when a veteran airline executive pointed that out, the carrier responded with legal threats.
United is raising checked bag fees to $50 for new tickets, another $10 increase that follows JetBlue’s latest move and will likely be copied across the industry. What makes this worse than a normal fare hike is that bag fees are largely exempt from the 7.5% federal excise tax on domestic tickets, so airlines have every incentive to move more of the price into fees instead of fares.
British Airways is forcing the employee football club that has carried its name for more than four decades to rebrand, ending a link that stretches back to BOAC staff teams in 1947 and cutting off ties to its own workforce history.
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.
Senior United flight attendants are on track to earn more than $101 an hour under the union’s newly endorsed contract — and the pay rates leaked online before most crew have even seen the full agreement. The union’s leadership voted unanimously to send the deal to members, but the biggest remaining question is what United got in return for the richer wages, boarding pay, retroactive pay, and better layover hotel protections.
A conservative influencer walked into a Dallas–Fort Worth airport chapel during Muslim prayer and emerged claiming the space was “basically a mosque,” pointing to prayer rugs and the lack of Christian symbols. But the bigger reality is less dramatic: DFW’s chapels are multi-faith spaces, Friday Muslim services there are longstanding, and in an era when relatively few Americans pray while traveling, the people most likely to make regular use of airport worship space are often the ones most visibly committed to doing so.
An Alaska Airlines flight attendant says a midflight coffee maker failure sprayed her with scalding coffee, grounds, and boiling water, leaving permanent scars and ongoing medical treatment. She is not suing the airline, though — the lawsuit targets Stumptown Coffee, alleging the company’s packaging was defective and unsafe for aircraft use.
Delta is giving SkyMiles members free access to The New York Times onboard and for up to 24 hours afterward — but this is not really about passenger convenience. It is another deal to monetize a captive audience in the air, turning seatback screens into a trial-and-conversion funnel for both Delta and the Times.
Delta built the strongest airline in America by being better than everyone else at the basics and then layering on a premium halo.
That halo still matters, but it is starting to outrun the product underneath it. United is improving faster, Delta’s operational edge is not what it was, and the airline that spent 20 years building the title now looks increasingly vulnerable to losing it.
Southwest credit cards now earn more points on Lyft rides, giving cardholders another easy way to pile up Rapid Rewards. What makes this better than it first sounds is that the rewards can stack: earn points from your Southwest card, credit the ride to another Lyft loyalty partner, and layer on other perks or rebates at the same time.
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 »
