Monthly Archives for January 2020.
Cathay Pacific is offering a 10% bonus transferring credit card points to Asia Miles in January (registration required). This is a bonus offered by Cathay itself, rather than by the bank, so you won’t see it on the Membership Rewards or Citi Thank You Rewards websites.
The old “The Club” lounge space at the Phoenix airport has been renovated and enlarged and is now two separate lounges with a shared entrance and separate reception spaces. It is an American Express Centurion Lounge and also an Escape Lounge. And they’re both now open.
Air Canada Jazz flight 8684 from Montreal to Bagotville in Quebec lost a wheel during takeoff on Friday. The Dash 8-300 had 49 passengers and 3 crew on board. The “inboard left main wheel began to glow orange.” The wheel came off the gear strut and fell off the aircraft.
On Thursday Air India’s flight AI865 from Delhi to Mumbai was delayed 7 hours prior to finally departing. However while the plane taxied out, it returned to the gate with another issue.
Passengers had had all they could stand, and they couldn’t stands no more. Unfortunately instead of eating spinach they erupted in other, less productive ways.
United Airlines MileagePlus no longer has anything to do with miles at all. You no longer earn points based on distance flown. You no longer earn status based on distance flown. Award costs aren’t based on distance either.
With elite status now based on money spent they’ve put an end to “miles” completely. They’ve been trying to do this for over 30 years.
There’s a new United Airlines status match program. Elite frequent flyers are valuable customers – to the airline they’re loyal, and also potentially to other airlines who might poach their business. The same holds for elites in hotel loyalty programs.
Status makes it difficult to switch, you’re better treated by an airline or hotel chain and it’s tough to start somewhere else from scratch. That’s why many loyalty programs offer to match your current status in order to win your business.
Airlines are tightening their belts, trying to cut what it costs them to give out denied boarding compensation to passengers when they overbook a flight. Both United and American have copied Delta in soliciting ‘bids’ from customers for what compensation they’d accept, hoping to avoid bidding wars at the gate.
In the wake of United’s April 2017 passenger dragging incident – where David Dao was told to give up his seat for two crewmembers and refused, winding up bloodied by airport – there was a huge public backlash against bumping passengers off of overbooked flights. And airlines started paying out far more compensation to avoid involuntarily denying boarding to passengers.
AirAsia wants to create Santan Restaurant and T&CO Cafe as a franchise with 100 outlets within 3-5 years, even expanding to New York. They see a market for an Asian version of American fast food chains. U.S. chains succeed even though they aren’t inherently great and charge more than local equivalents.
A model of bad food and high prices isn’t a great starting place except at airports and tourist spots, but that’s usually driven by high rents and a need to meet highly diverse tastes – people aren’t there for the food.
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.
A former producer of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette took an end of year mileage run and wound up in a Mexican prison. Many people were calling into questions details of his story but most of it actually checks out.
However Kimmel reached out to me and let me know there was one detail of the story I had gotten wrong though. All this wasn’t even to renew his Executive Platinum (100,000 mile) status. He was mileage running to make Platinum Pro (75,000 mile status).
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 »
