Monthly Archives for December 2018.
United has announced a significant increase in international flying from San Francisco. Since CEO Oscar Munoz was talking to press, and it was being touted as ‘historic’, speculation abounded.
Several new routes and additional flights have been announced — but not even a single new destination for United.
American Airlines hosts a ‘state of the airline’ event for employees after its earnings calls. There senior management shares their vision for the company and employees can ask questions. In addition to those questions that are asked live, there are followup questions that get asked – and answered – in writing.
The airline has shared written responses to several employee questions, and some of those contained information I did not know (although in some cases may have assumed).
Where do they want to fly bigger planes? Will they be updating business class seats on certain aircraft? How far along are they installing satellite wifi?
There are reasons to be skeptical that the breach took place in 2014, rather than there were records in the data warehouse which could have been taken that dated to 2014.
Regardless of what did or didn’t happen, and whom to blame, we’re clearly not getting the full story from Marriott. And since it’s our very sensitive personal information they failed to safeguard, we should be demanding it.
Two weeks ago IHG Rewards Club launched a promotion to give you free points for posting a selfie. The photo of yourself was supposed to be ‘at home’ or ‘at an IHG hotel’.
Back in June I wrote about the class action settlement over fuel surcharges imposed by British Airways on U.S. customers between November 9, 2006 and April 17, 2013.
Sadly British Airways stopped calling these member taxes ‘fuel surcharges’ (which legally have to be related to the cost of fuel) and started calling them ‘surcharges’ (money for nothing) and they can keep on penalizing Avios redemptions to their heart’s content.
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.
Supermodel Chrissy Teigen is a total frequent flyer geek.
Last year she even broke news about a flight turning back around to LAX due to a security issue when she and her husband John Legend were enroute to Tokyo. She’s even brunched with Chase Sapphire cardholders.
A little over a year ago American Airlines started offering more coach award space, and they did it in an interesting way. They started opening up award space on a married-segment basis — availability wasn’t for a specific flight but for an entire itinerary.
Agents are now being reprimanded for helping customers to work around these restrictions. And married segments make it very difficult to make changes to an award later, a real blow to Executive Platinums and ConciergeKey members who have free changes as a program benefit.
American Airlines is apparently rolling out new amenity kits — and not with Cole Haan. It appears that this new amenity kit has leaked — put out into service too early. And the early word seems to be they look pretty awesome.
I recently shared what’s in my wallet and I clearly use a lot of different cards for different purposes in different situations.
Keeping a strategy straight for yourself can be hard enough, but how do you make sure your spouse — who isn’t as attuned to these things as you are — uses the right card every time?
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 »
