Monthly Archives

Monthly Archives for October 2016.

Yesterday Could Have Been an Operational Meltdown, But American Airlines Nailed It

delta and american plane tails
Oct 02 2016

For pilots the impossible has occurred. The US Airways-America West merger was never actually completed in large measure because pilots kept suing each other over seniority, and indeed even over which pilots could negotiate with the airline on a contract and what they had to ask for. The American merger, by giving US Airways and legacy America West (‘US Airways West’) pilots a raise and pre-committing everyone to an outcome, finally created the ability for pilots to integrate.

Yesterday represented potentially the biggest operational challenge for the combined airline, not dealing with customer reservations or frequent flyer accounts but moving to a single Flight Operating System.

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Hilton Just Revealed Hotels that Will Cost More Points (and Less) Starting October 12

Oct 01 2016

Since Hilton’s award chart changes in 2013, there haven’t been huge additional changes.

Hilton decided to alter 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.

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Doha Airport Has a Theme Song and Music Video — But It Doesn’t Come Close to Munich’s

Oct 01 2016

Doha’s still-new Hamad International Airport is over the top in many ways. For instance there’s the giant Teddy Bear sculpture. It’s made out of bronze, is 23 feet tall, and weighs nearly 20 tons. A member of the Qatari royal family apparently purchased it for about $6.8 million. It had previously been displayed in front of the Seagram’s Building on Park Avenue in New York. There’s now a big clay sculpture there.

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