Monthly Archives for March 2018.
Cathay Pacific is coming under criticism by Malaysia’s deputy minister for home affairs and internal security.
The airline is “offering free ticket changes for Malaysians returning home to vote.” Malaysia is scheduling an election. The date isn’t yet known, but could come as soon as the end of April. Malaysia by the way just pushed through redistricting this month.
Air France KLM Flying Blue is a transfer partner of all the major bank transferrable points currencies.
Air France KLM gives members of their program access to far more business class award seats on Air France than partners like Delta and Alaska have access to.
It’s easy to look askance at corporate mission language, but I actually think that American’s leadership has a pretty clear idea of where they’re going and what’s important to them. They’re really transparent about it. You can agree or disagree with the strategy, or like or dislike it as a customer. But they aren’t mealy mouthed about it at all.
Economy class passengers are often derisively referred to as ‘self-loading cargo’.
So perhaps the idea isn’t entirely original, but in an off the record talk the CEO of Qantas says if there is a new class of service “Qantas is likely to be the airline that creates it.”
Cathay Pacific will give uniformed staff the option of wearing pants for the first time. This required extensive talks between the airline and its flight attendants union.
Clearly the role of the flight attendant has changed over time and societal attitudes have changed too. The very first airline flight attendant was hired by United Airlines as an onboard nurse. That persona morphed into a hypersexualized one….
Delta made some changes to the elite qualifying miles you earn flying Aeromexico effective for travel April 1 onward. And they made the change retroactive for customers who had already purchased tickets for future travel.
However if you know the secret handshake you can get them to honor the miles that were promised at the time of purchase.
An illegal immigration with several convictions for violent crimes escaped in a taxi at New York JFK this week as he was about to be deported.
TSA required ICE officials to remove his handcuffs. He ran off. And no one reported it to airport police for 45-90 minutes.
Qatar has the best business class product in the world in its new ‘QSuites’. To be sure even their older Airbus A350 business class is very good, a B/E Aerospace Super Diamond seat and a phenomenal soft product. But QSuites are revolutionary suites with doors and moveable partitions that allow two and even four passengers to travel together in their own space.
Currently they fly the product to New York JFK, Washington Dulles, and starting Saturday to Chicago.
Air India is warning staff that they’ll get in trouble if they keep upgrading friends and family to business class. The Chairman of the airline sent a memo to employees, It has come to my knowledge that operating crew carry out upgrades to business and first class unofficially during the flight for their friends and relatives. This is viewed seriously. …It is reiterated once again that officials/crew members responsible for all such unauthorised upgrades shall face strict disciplinary action. Air India Boeing 787 Apparently the concern is just that putting friends and family into empty business class seats trades off with selling onboard upgrades. I hadn’t been aware that Air India allows onboard upgrades for a fee. That opens a whole different avenue for crew corruption. I imagine that passengers are far more likely to…
Yesterday I received a nice box with a thank you note inside and a book 1000 Places to See Before You Die with my name inscribed onto the cover.
I reached out to Barclays to see what’s going on with this and they shared:
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 »
