These are all basic tips, great for getting started in miles and points, but also useful for how to think about the miles you’ve already got. I don’t do enough basic talk around here so I’m hoping this list will benefit.
I find it’s worth checking a booking right after you make it to make sure everything was done correctly — are traveler names accurate? Can you assign seats? Does a partner airline see the booking and does it appear ready for travel? If the reservation is for some time in the future, scroll through your reservations at least once a month. Do it again a few days in advance of travel, too.
My morning routine is simple. It starts with coffee, and eases into work. That’s true whether I’m at home or on the road. I’m drinking a little less coffee than I used to. For years I joked that you could run my blood through a still once a week to filter out caffeine byproducts, and use that to run a local taxi fleet’s alternative fuels experiment.
Coffee plays an important role in travel – from the airport to the plane, and from the hotel to the city around it.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
A man survived the journey as a stowaway in the landing gear of American Airlines flight AA1182 from Guatemala City to Miami on Saturday and was discovered on arrival at the gate in video shared by the Only In Dade social media account. He was taken to a hospital by ambulance.
A reader reached out to me about the Park Hyatt St. Kitts. The hotel appeared to be selling standard suites for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. As a Globalist (top tier elite) he wanted to book a room and confirm a suite.
However he reported that the hotel responded to Hyatt, when they tried to confirm the suite, that the suites weren’t actually available and that the inventory was a glitch.
I travel with UK power adapters. The three-pronged grip will stay in the outlet, while U.S. plugs will fall out of an outlet that’s not properly maintained just enough to lose charging capability. But there’s another solution to the problem that doesn’t even require packing something extra.
There are two elements to loyalty marketing: recognition and reward. The former is the elite program, how you treat your best customers. The latter is rebate for their spend.
We can make some overall claims about best that will not apply to every member, every time, with their own subjective preferences. We can do this by looking at the overall earn-and-burn program, and by comparing the major elite benefits each program offers.
Raising more money for airlines by delivering a better product to customers is a better and more sustainable business model in a competitive industry than trying to charge more for the same or lesser product.
In September Delta Air Lines proposed that passengers banned from any airline over mask violations should be banned from all airlines. Of course each airline has its own standard for adding passengers to such a list.
And that’s something American Airlines CEO Doug Parker pointed out in response to an employee question this past week at an internal Crew News session with executives, a recording of which was reviewed by View From The Wing. Yet where there’s egregious behavior that becomes public, airlines will ban a passenger even when their actions took place on another airline.
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 »
