Monthly Archives for November 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.
There was a lot of excitement recently over the ability to buy Alaska Airlines gift cards at a 10% discount via Costco ($500 gift card for $450). Delta Air Lines is offering a 10% bonus but there’s something unique about the bonus. It isn’t an electronic gift card. Instead it’s “a limited-edition $50 Delta Gift Card made from a retired DC-9 aircraft“
This will give United 11 open clubs. They’ll also be offering “more pre-packaged fresh food items” at Denver, Chicago and Honolulu “including breakfast partfaits, sandwiches, wraps, salads, desserts…”
One time passes valid for a year are currently discounted to $39 rather than $59.
Chase is running 30% a transfer bonus from Ultimate Rewards to British Airways, Iberia and Aer Lingus through December 9, 2020. Every 1000 Chase points becomes 1300 points in the destination program, and that bonus posts along with the transfer (usually immediately).
Stuck with huge inventory that airlines weren’t buying during the pandemic, the small business that supplies first class nuts to United and American was on the verge of going under. The owner said they had “50,000 pounds of nuts American Airlines and United didn’t want!”
Word got out where to buy the nut mixes and grounded frequent flyers bought them all!
The new Boeing 787-8s American is receiving don’t have exactly the same interiors as the planes that they began taking delivery of in 2015.
Reviewing a sneak peak at the interiors two things stand out to me.
Hotel breakfast is one of the most important elite benefits and something that’s considered standard, ironically, at most non-full service properties. But what happens when a guest expects to receive breakfast and doesn’t, either because of a change to the loyalty program or as a cost saving measure gussied up as ‘protecting guests and workers during Covid-19’?
Pfizer reports their Covid-19 vaccine, in conjunction with BioNTech, so far appears 90% effective. With 94 people in the clinical trial having gotten Covid-19 so far, that means people in the control group receiving the placebo were about 10 times as likely to get the virus as someone who had received the vaccine.
The drug maker could reach milestone of 2 months since the second dose for half of trial participants in order to apply for Emergency Use Authorization next week. They report no ‘serious’ side effects in the trial. That’s great news, great progress. And it means we should have great optimism for travel.
Kevin Mitchell of the Business Travel Coalition argues that a federal face mask mandate for airlines and airports is crucial to bringing back business travel. But a mask mandate is likely to mean less mask wearing because it’ll have more exemptions than current airline policy. And business travel isn’t being held up by insufficient masking on planes.
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 »
