Monthly Archives

Monthly Archives for January 2022.

Who’s Paying For All Those Bazillions Of SimplyMiles?

by Gary Leff

Jan 01 2022

SimplyMiles lets you earn American Airlines AAdvantage miles for transactions with a variety of merchants when making the purchase using a Mastercard that’s been linked to the site. They host numerous ‘Mastercard Offers,’ sort of like Amex Offers. But Mastercard doesn’t have the direct consumer relationship that Amex has with its closed loop. So they’re going after American AAdvantage customers.

I earned 7 million miles with their latest promotion. Other readers earned more. And I’ve had several people ask me about the economics of these offers.

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U.S. Air Travel Melts Down On New Year’s As Employees Call In Sick

by Gary Leff

Jan 01 2022

Cancellations are abundant across airlines at this point, and are already spreading into Sunday and even Monday, despite incentives for employees to show up. Some may come into work sick, others may be calling in sick for the usual New Year’s reasons (with Covid meaning there aren’t the extra crew available to pick up those shifts). And schedule turmoil extends because planes and crew wind up out of position and airlines take time to recover from that. Meanwhile, while it’s possible that Omicron spreads so fast we’ll be peaking soon in parts of the country, the number of people unavailable to work appears to be growing.

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