Monthly Archives for December 2021.
Delta and Alaska Airlines commit to delivering checked bags within 20 minutes of each flight arriving. If they fail to meet that, you’re entitled to miles or a credit towards a future trip as compensation. Neither United nor American offer this.
A brief moment of honesty from an American Airlines manager explains why they can’t do it.
The FAA and TSA have a new partnership where people facing fines for unruly behavior will have PreCheck revoked. As the FAA Administrator puts it, “If you act out of line, you will wait in line.”
For several airline employees, calling in sick when they’ve got Covid-19 costs them their attendance pay. For flight attendants at American that can be thousands of dollars. The incentive program drives employees to show up for work, but it drives employees to do that even when they’re sick and even when they’re potentially infectious.
Florida Man’s flight was delayed, he took the keys from an airport employee’s golf cart to detain the man, a brawl ensued and a responding officer pulled a gun on a group of fighting passengers. All in a day’s work at the Miami airport.
I don’t look at average review scores for a hotel property on a site like TripAdvisor. A lot of reviews may be fake, and the reviewers may not have similar tastes or expectations even if they’re real. But there’s another thing that skews ratings: incentives by a property to post great reviews. Hotels that do this will get more positive reviews. That doesn’t mean it’s a better hotel.
The U.K. may go back into lockdown – from late December through January – including a ban on travel, not permitting British residents to leave or letting foreign visitors to enter.
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.
The American Airlines caterer at Dallas – Fort Worth, LSG Sky Chefs, is short on ice and blaming supply chain for the problem. Flights are getting notes, instead of ice, in their catering drawers.
I continue to travel, and I continue to make travel plans. But I’m doing the best I can to use miles whenever possible, and book cancellable itineraries. The next couple of months couple be touch and go. I’m not making a prediction of what happens, but I live my life on probabilities and make the best decisions I can given the knowledge I have at the moment. And right now I’m giving myself as much optionality as possible.
What I’m really saying is that many people seemed to have calmed after the initial scare over Thanksgiving about the Omicron variant, and I don’t think we’re really internalizing what the next couple of months could (not will) look like.
Many public health officials see mask requirements as an ultra-low (or no) cost step to take to require them. There’s been a push from Biden insiders to make masks on planes permanent.
Anthony Fauci, on ABC’s This Week, was asked whether we would “get to the point where we won’t have to wear masks on airplanes?” His answer: “I don’t think so.”
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 »
