Monthly Archives for November 2020.
American Airlines announced today that they’re eliminating change fees for all international tickets other than Basic Economy tickets that originate in North or South America. They’re taking it much farther than other airlines had when the first round of change fee eliminations were announced at the end of August.
A business traveler from Virginia checked into the Holiday Inn Express & Suites York in Pennsylvania and returned to room 217 drunk on Friday. He took out his 9 millimeter pistol. And he fired it in the room.
The bullet “went through the room of a sleeping man and an elevator lobby before nearly striking a woman in the parking lot.”
Between May 18 and July 15, Marriott ran their biggest-ever points purchase bonus offering 60% more points for the same money. Now they have brought this bonus back. It can be worthwhile for certain hotel redemptions – and also for laundering points into some obscure-yet-valuable airline frequent flyer progams.
Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways will start direct flights from the United Arab Emirates to Tel Aviv on March 31, 2021. It has entered into a new agreement with Israel’s El Al for codesharing and a frequent flyer partnership.
This is monumental. Not only will this Arab state airline fly non-stop to Israel, it will all Israel’s flag carrier to put its own code on Etihad flights. That means, effectively, that certain Etihad flights – which all begin with a prayer from the Quran – will also be El Al flights.
The CEOs of the 7 largest U.S. airlines told Congress that unless they get a second bailout by the end of the year, don’t expect them to ship vaccines. It’s an idle threat. They’re telling their own workers they’re ready and eager for the vaccine shipping business.
Subsidizing flight attendant salaries makes no sense if you’re talking about readiness of cargo flights. And there are better ways that funneling huge unrelated subsidies to airlines to ensure a business is ready to deliver on a big commitment. Just follow the Operation Warp Speed model and guarantee the purchase of cargo capacity to allow the airlines to plan for it.
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.
Videoconferencing has become more accepted as a technology. More people know how to do it. And peopled being ‘zoomed into a meeting’ are no longer the outsiders, only half in the meeting with people in a room.
In-office visits are hard to coordinate. They can’t return until people are back in the office, but all people aren’t going back to the office all the time. If there are a quarter fewer in-office days overall, that makes coordinating business meetings harder and there will be fewer business trips.
1% of people are responsible for 50% of commercial aviation emissions. And this is not at all surprising, since only about 1 in 9 people in the world even fly at all in a given year. Air travel is far more common in North America and Europe than in Africa, for instance, though Africa’s aviation sector is growing.
People are using this 1% number to argue for new global restrictions on airlines, but let’s break down what it means.
Customers with the original Hyatt Credit Card launched in 2010 who kept that card and didn’t convert to The World Of Hyatt Credit Card after it was introduced in mid-2018 are going to have their legacy cards coverted over January 11, 2021.
They have an offer to earn a free night with modest spend, and many cardmembers keep their grandfathered lower annual fee for a year even with the benefits of the newer card.
The airline expects a 5 month bankruptcy process. The business continues in its limited Covid state in the meantime. They believe they have the cash needed to see themselves through reorganization. Will they be able to attract additional exit financing, even if they manage to discharge some of their debts?
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 »
