Monthly Archives for December 2015.
A family was delayed 90 minutes in Phoenix enroute to Minneapolis, giving them a 7-10 minute connection. They arrived at their gate and their flight headed for Memphis — the last flight had pushed back.
One of the family members was screaming, crying, and waving their hands in the window. The pilot saw this, checked with the gate, and learned the man and his family were headed to a funeral. The pilot brought the plane back to the gate.
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 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.
I find the Air France KLM Flying Blue program incredibly frustrating for booking awards. There are false positives for award space on their website, customer service representatives are often rude and incompetent, and most importantly they have a penchant for shutting down newly opened accounts that members transfer points into (such as from American Express Membership Rewards and Citi ThankYou Rewards) and immediately redeem awards from.
As a result I’ve limited the coverage I’ve given to the program. I don’t recommend using it for most purposes because I simply find the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
So I don’t get too worked up over changes that are coming to that program, although those changes are noteworthy because they represent a spread of changes.
I really like small business frequent flyer programs. In addition to travelers earning points in their own mileage account, a business earns points for their travel as well. The earning isn’t the same, or necessarily as generous, but it’s a double dip and across several travelers in a company the rewards can really add up.
Spending on just my own travel each year seems to earn enough points for me to give someone AAdvantage Gold status and also redeem for an Admirals Club membership.
The program lets you redeem points for upgrade awards, and It turns out that there are a few more fare types that have been excluded from being upgraded with these certificates.
Last week a Delta flight attendant was gettin’ sick and tired of cats on a plane. Now it rats and Air India. An Air India Boeing 787 headed from Mumbai to London turned around six hours into flight “after a cabin crew member spotted a rat on board.”
It’s not the first Air India rat incident this year. And last year an Air India Airbus A321 was grounded in Delhi after rats ran riot.
Denver security lines can be among the worst in the country on a normal day. Peak holiday travel days aren’t normal days.
The TSA didn’t forecast the volume of travel in Denver the Monday after Christmas. And weather delays meant that flight times bunched up. The TSA didn’t adjust staffing for either event. And that meant lines of 2 to 4 hours to clear the checkpoint.
After Hilton’s dramatic award chart gutting of nearly three years ago, there weren’t huge changes again this year.
Hilton decided to change the way they made changes to how they re-assign hotels to award categories. Instead of an annual change to tons of hotels (a schedule they really weren’t wedded to in the past anyway) they decided they would make rolling changes throughout the year. And instead of informing all members proactively of these changes, they would just post them on a web page in the name of ‘transparency’.
Priceonomics says that hated checked bag fees are actually too low because they take up valuable cargo space that could be sold at a higher price, and because the market price to ship stuff is higher than what they charge in checked bag fees.
It turns out Priceonomics gets the economics of checked bags exactly wrong.
Last month this blog and ExpertFlyer conducted a survey of frequent travelers for their habits, preferences, and predictions for air travel. Those results are in.
Engaged frequent travelers don’t think air travel is getting better, and are at least occasionally delayed. But club lounges are getting better, airport wifi is getting better, and net net the airport experiences is better than it used to be. But there were a few surprising finds.
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 »
