When I was young my family had a big gathering each year at the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden. I remember being quite young, maybe 5 or 6, and spilling something on my shirt at brunch beforehand, so had to make a stop at a department store on the way to the event for a replacement. And… I spilled food on that shirt later in the day, too. My great uncle bought me a t-shirt at a concession stand to wear. It was a young boy sharing his ice cream cone with his horse. The horse was licking the ice cream. And the caption read, “treat your pony as you would like to be treated yourself.” I still have that shirt, although it doesn’t fit anymore. But it was my lesson very young…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for November 2014.
An Update to Cookie-Gate: Another Change to the Beloved Cookie!
A couple of weeks ago I shared my rant about the American Airlines cookie. First world problems, right? If a cookie is going to be what they serve as dessert even on dinner flights, then I’d hope they would make it the cookie that actually used to be gooey, moist, and delicious … There even used to be a choice of cookies. But they replaced my American Airlines cookie with an inedible piece of cake shaped like a (msaller) cookie. At first I accepted the cookie, took a bite, and stopped. After a few times realizing it wasn’t the vagaries of a particular flight, batch, or flight attendant I simply started declining the cookie. Last night flying American I finished my meal and the flight attendant brought out what I assumed would be cookies. Instead…
Delta Massively Improves Award Search Calendar: Shows Partner Availability and Mileage Cost By Day!
Just after writing that there are five good reasons to fly Delta over other US airlines, along comes the elimination of one reason not to focus on Delta’s Skymiles program. Their award search calendar has been very, very broken — it showed only availability on Delta flights, and only whether there were seats at the high, medium, and low level… often not corresponding at all with actual availability even on Delta’s aircraft. (It might well show a ‘high’ availability only day, even though there was low saver award space on a partner that was bookable on the website.. but you had to click through to see it.) Delta took one step towards transparency last week telling you that you’d have to call up reservations if you wanted to book a stopover on an international award…
Why Nearly All Airline Advertising Fails
British Airways has a new ‘Experience the Welcome of Home’ video, telling the story of an Indian woman living in Toronto. She apparently flies British Airways to visit her family in India. Great story, we all have places to go, and it’s well-produced. But I have no idea after watching it why it’s better to transit Heathrow on BA enroute to India than to fly any of their competitors? The ad gives me no reason whatsoever to choose British Airways, and I’m pretty sure that would be true even if I were an Indian woman living in Canada. There are, best as I can tell, five types of airline ads: Those that sell flying (airlines used to do this for a reason – people were scared or flying was new – and now seem to…
Five Good Reasons to Choose Delta
I give Delta a hard time frequently on this blog. I’m pretty transparent about my travel patterns and choices, and how I go about making those. Delta hasn’t been my choice and I think I’m justified in that. I’m not going to rehash all of the reasons here. Instead I thought I’d take a contrary position for this post, and offer up five good reasons why someone would want to choose Delta and/or Skymiles as their primary air carrier/loyalty program. See what you think, and whether any of these reasons apply to you. You’re a super frequent flyer. American and United both have top tiers at the 100,000 mile level. Delta, like United, requires minimum spend for elite status. If you’re flying more than 125,000 miles a year and spending more than $15,000 on airline…
Here’s Something Travel Providers Don’t Seem to Understand: Coffee Fuels Business Travel
I’ve written before about the monumental importance of hotel coffee. A business hotel needs to be able to provide coffee 24 hours a day. There are lots of ways to do this: in-room machines, club lounge, lobby, and even room service. The coffee needs to be drinkable, and that includes making it possible to get the real milk or creamer of your choice. That’s just basics. Hotels without in-room coffee, and a lobby option, and that do not offer 24 hour room service are a complete and total #fail. Claiming to be an upscale or full service property, and aiming at business travelers, they’re completely missing the point. I’ve been to too many properties where there’s no coffee before 6 a.m. That’s great, until: You’re coming in from another time zone, and getting up at…
Hacking the Long Lines at One of the Best Barbecue Spots in the World
For this post to be useful or interesting to you, you need to like barbecue and be planning to visit one of the best barbecue places out there (Black’s in Lockhart, Texas). And it’s really only useful to review right before your visit. In other words, most of you can ignore this post and a few of you just want to bookmark it for later. I’ve written about world famous Franklin Barbecue and about my favorite barbecue with sit down service, a full bar, and live music. You can’t avoid the lines at Franklin unless you’re President Obama. But you can make reservations for Lambert’s Downtown Barbecue. Most of the best barbecue places, though, are going to involve lines — especially on the weekends, and especially early (when you want to go, when the meat…
Major US Airline Planning to Reduce First Class Legroom Plus an Easy Free $10
News and notes from around the interweb: Runway Girl Network thinks a major US airline is going to reduce seat pitch in domestic first class and introduce similar seats as an international premium economy. Much of the piece sounds like implausible speculation, but one or both of these basic ideas seem plausible. Passenger charged over $1000 for inflight internet. This was on one flight! Bank of America credit and debit card holders get $10 free when they enroll in Visa checkout. Asiana faces a 45 day suspension of their Seoul – San Francisco route over the crash of Asiana 214. $50 off Emirates flights from the US. Me, I’ll just redeem my Alaska Airlines miles for Emirates’ A380 first class suites. You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day…
Why I Left United Airlines: Not all Reasons are Equally Valid
There’s a new New Yorker article that’s getting lots of play, “Why I Left United Airlines” Most of the complaints in the piece are complaints about the airline industry generally which are then used as a general indictment of mergers. And while I think that mergers generally fail to deliver on their promises to shareholders or customers, I’m not sure that United-Continental alone proves that and throwing in mergers in other industries anecdotally in a short piece serves to make the case either. For the most part, how you feel about the article will track your general mood affiliation with United and with airlines writ large. Nonetheless, this is a claim that I do believe: The United merger is a grand example of a consumer sinkhole—a merger that proves to be not just a onetime…
The Card That Earns 2 Delta Miles Per Dollar on All Spending
There’s actually a card that earns 2 Delta miles per dollar on all spending. I never knew this card even existed. It’s the Canadian co-brand Delta card issued by Capital One. Usually I think of our Neighbors to the North as being at a relative miles and points disadvantage. They don’t have as much competition in their loyalty programs as we do in the U.S. That’s why it didn”t surprise me that I considered Air Canada’s Aeroplan the most devalued airline frequent flyer program in North America, even before their most recent devaluations. I suppose though if you’re focusing your marketing on Canadians, and want them to accrue Delta Skymiles, that you’re going to have to be pretty aggressive with rewards. And the interesting thing here is that the card is offered by Capital One.…
