Monthly Archives for October 2020.
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.
I hope the anonymous airline captain who authored the latest post at Live and Let’s Fly demanding more respect never happens to be flying an aircraft I’m ticketed on because he’s threatening to make things worse for passengers if pilots are criticized, even when the criticism is justified – as the anonymous captain admits that it is.
He takes issue with my post about the Delta captain who kicked a woman off a flight over her F-12 hat, which she took off as he instructed.
The federal government is looking to require foreign visitors and prospective immigrants to submit “fingerprints and possibly other biometric information..into a new database” prior to being permitted to submit online visa applications and even ESTA requests.
Jamie Baker, in a research note for J.P. Morgan Chase, points out that if airlines get another ‘payroll support’ bailout they’d have to spend some of that money on extra payroll. In other words it isn’t all money straight into the kitty.
But will it happen? Baker says a new round of subsidies will happen (“We believe PSP 2.0 is a question of when, not if”). And then expect airlines to come back again for a third round.
Barclays is offering 100,000 points as an initial bonus for the $99 annual fee JetBlue Plus Card. The offer is also available for the $99 annual fee JetBlue Business Card.
You’ll generally get 1 to 1.6 cents per point in value redeeming for JetBlue flights. Mint (business class) flights will skew towards the lower end. I value a JetBlue point at around 1.25 cents apiece, so a 100,000 point offer means $1250 worth of travel, or $1151 net of each card’s annual fee.
One way business class between the US and Europe on Air France and KLM has gone from 75,000 to 95,000 miles. Partner one way awards to North Asia are up to 102,500 miles. And Virgin Atlantic business class one ways booked within 3 weeks of departure can run as high as 195,000 miles. That’s insane.
Spanish flag carrier Iberia is owned by British Airways parent company IAG. It’s a member of oneworld, and part of the same transatlantic joint venture as American Airlines. They have a nice business class product, and right now they have amazing business class award availability from several U.S. cities for four passengers for next fall.
Let’s take a look at American’s current lunch and dinner sandwich, enjoyed this past week on a flight from Dallas Fort-Worth to Washington Dulles. The standard offering appears to be a ‘low protein’ meal.
American Airlines still sells first class, and doesn’t discount it based on providing less service. This represents a current first class meal. The man who took this photo fo the current first class meal says “[g]lad I ate before my flight!”
A week ago Delta was briefly the largest airline in the world by scheduled seats. They’ve dropped back down to number three. However the largest airline in the world right now isn’t American Airlines, as they usually claim. It’s actually China Southern Airlines (which is part-owned by American, and also Qatar, though is largely a state-owned enterprise).
These are the top 10 airlines in the world based on their size (scheduled seat capacity) right now:
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.
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 »
