Monthly Archives for August 2019.
Cathay Pacific’s CEO Rupert Hogg, and the airline’s Chief Commercial Officer, have resigned. Hogg has been well-regarded in the role, driving a turnaround in the airline’s finances.
Ultimately the move is harmful to China’s ability to maintain Hong Kong as a business center, showing how the state will meddle in corporate affairs rather than adhering to “one country two systems.”
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.
Marriott travel packages used to be the best value in the program, combining hotel stays with airline miles transfers. The new program gutted the value of Marriott travel packages. It seems though that this may have been in anticipation of peak season award pricing which is another step towards Marriott’s cost containment efforts, and driving the program towards delivering consistent average value on each stay rather than having peaks and valleys (which create opportunity for exceptional value). Bonvoy confirms to me that Marriott travel packages do not have restrictions on use during peak nights. Marriott reward night certificates can be used for their permitted category whether the standard room redemption is for off season, standard or peak season. As a result you get the most value during peak season. There’s a whole lot more value…
SkyTeam airlines including Delta and Alitalia have business class roundtrips to Italy on sale from $1344. You can depart from several US cities — such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Detroit, and Miami – and travel to places including Rome, Milan or Venice.
There may be more cities bookable using this deal, but act fast because this is an amazing fare for travel over holidays that won’t last.
It was like US Airways flight 1549 – the Miracle on the Hudson – but in a field. A Ural Airlines Airbus A321 suffered a serious bird strike on takeoff from Moscow Zhukovsky airport. The flight was headed to Simferopol in the Ukraine and had 226 passengers and 7 crew on board.
The crew of the Ural Airlines aircraft did a truly heroic job landing their aircraft, wheels up in a field, keeping the fuselage intact. And fortunately there did not appear to be fuel leaking from the engines. Walking away from this is really special.
I don’t think the Fairfield New Orleans Downtown studied Seinfeld well enough to internalize what reservations are for.
When Marriott first announced their new program they told us they’d be adding a new highest redemption category 8 and also adding peak and off peak pricing for 2019. They put off category 8 until March but postponed peak and off peak pricing even further.
They’ve been silent on when to expect it until now, giving us a month’s notice before the new top redemption price could go as high as 100,000 points per night. Effective September 14th they’re making some other changes to the program as well.
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.
Delta continues to double down on passenger entertainment not just for international flights but across its domestic fleet. They’re now over 700 aircraft offering seat back entertainment screens.
United and American have been moving in the opposite direction. They have eschewed screens to save money – about a million dollars per aircraft – offering streaming content that customers can view on their own devices. In most cases this means passengers watching movies on phones.
Tell me you can watch Hong Kong airport protesters since “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Les Miserables without crying. The song, by the way, is banned in China.
It’s not clear what the U.S. can do, or any of us can beyond paying attention, outside intervention could just as easily play into Chinese hands dismissing and minimizing the moment as some sort of external plot, delegitimizing the grassroots nature of the protests.
We may not be able to do very much, but we have our sympathy to offer and we can be inspired by what people will risk for freedom and not be so cavalier about giving away our own.
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 »
