Monthly Archives for May 2017.
The New York Times carried a piece by Patrick Smith yesterday with what’s supposed to be the ‘smart take’ on recent airline incidents. He says ‘there was no golden age of air travel’ (indeed, that the golden age of air travel in many ways is now).
While United claimed these new fares were a benefit for customers, they were in a very real sense lying because Basic Economy fares were (as American Airlines candidly put it describing their own Basic Economy offering) merely ‘new attributes’ for the lowest fares, and not new lower fares at all.
In other words, Basic Economy fares give you fewer benefits at the same price you used to pay. The goal is to make these fares unpleasant enough that you’ll spend more to avoid them.
I usually try to avoid travel over major holiday weekends like this one. The bookends of long weekends are ‘amateur days’. Airports are crowded, planes are full (they are most of the time nowadays anyway) and lines are longer.
Very frequent flyers can get frustrated with once a year (or less) travelers but really shouldn’t. The skies — and the airports — do not belong to us. We put in our time, and we get our perks, we know the drill and it comes easier for us anyway with PreCheck for security, club lounges to wait in, and priority boarding so we don’t lose overhead bin space.
Delta quietly devalued their miles again over the holiday weekend adding fuel surcharges to Virgin Atlantic business class awards departing the U.S..
A year ago a business class roundtrip on Virgin cost 125,000 Delta SkyMiles. Yesterday it cost as much as 205,000 miles and a $956 cash co-pay. But this change has been rolled back.
It’s no surprise that when United Airlines employees asked their President whether American’s introduction of inferior seats was an opportunity for United gain an advantage by offering a better product, United’s President said no.
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.
Last month I wrote that small children whose fathers are hunched over controls have landed planes with fewer signals than Delta gives out that their miles cannot be trusted.
The FAA has ordered removal of some seats from smaller jets because of a safety issue. They’re seats that customers generally hate, but the reason for the removal is different than why customers hate them.
Back in September Lufthansa became the 19th airline set up with TSA PreCheck. By joining Air Canada, Etihad, Aeromexico and WestJet, what was once US airlines only — and not even all of them at that — the massive US data-sharing, surveillance and passenger-convenience program had gone global.
In January 11 more airlines joined including Spirit, Virgin Atlantic, Emirates and Avianca to bring total participation to 30. Now 7 more airlines have joined.
Aly Raisman was captain of the 2012 and 2016 U.S. women’s Olympic gymnastics team. She won gold in the team and floor competitions and bronze on the balance beam in 2012 and gold in the team event in 2016.
Going through TSA though, the employees there don’t think much of her physique.
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 »
