Monthly Archives

Monthly Archives for June 2022.

Spirit Airlines Shareholders Should Take The JetBlue Deal. You Should Hope They Don’t.

by Gary Leff

Jun 29 2022

JetBlue’s proposed deal to acquire Spirit Airlines is better for Spirit shareholders than Frontier’s is. Spirit management supports the Frontier deal, and it will probably be approved. JetBlue is offering 40% more for Spirit Airlines than Frontier is. With Spirit’s shares falling to slightly below Frontier’s offer, the market thinks the successful suitor will be Frontier, not JetBlue.

However a Frontier deal for Spirit is actually better for consumers, even though JetBlue’s product is better than the one offered by either airline.

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Hôtel du Louvre’s Excuse For Not Offering Free Nights To Hyatt Members

by Gary Leff

Jun 29 2022

Hyatt’s Hôtel du Louvre in Paris all of a sudden stopped offering free night awards on points. Searching for stays, it appears the King Standard Room was gone entirely, and all rooms at the hotel that were for sale came with views. And those rooms aren’t standard rooms eligible for redemption. I reached out to Hyatt to see what was going on, and whether the hotel was compliant with Hyatt’s rules since I wasn’t able to find a single free night award in the coming year. Up until the end of May awards were easy to come by. Hyatt shares that the issue is the hotel’s renovation, specifically affecting the base level rooms at the hotel. [S]tandard rooms are more limited right now as many have been removed from inventory during some external renovations to…

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Virgin Atlantic Introduces Minimum Award Space Guarantee, Double Miles Awards For Gold Elites

by Gary Leff

virgin upper class seat
Jun 29 2022

Virgin Atlantic is launching two positive changes for its Flying Club frequent flyer program. They’re guaranteeing to release a minimum number of award seats when loading a flight into the schedule, and they’re allowing Gold elite members to book any seat they want that’s for sale as an award ticket by spending double miles.

Somewhat counterintuitively the introduction of double miles awards without capacity controls are actually the bigger deal here for the program, I think.

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JetBlue Doesn’t Know When To Quit, Raises Offer To Buy Spirit Airlines

by Gary Leff

jetblue
Jun 27 2022

When Frontier Airlines raised its offer to buy Spirit Airlines and gave the Spirit Airlines board cover to again endorse a merger between the two airlines (walking away from a much bigger offer from JetBlue that faces greater anti-trust scrutiny) it seemed like game over. The new offer even got the endorsement from two independent proxy advisory firms.

JetBlue isn’t done though. They’ve come out with a new, increased offer in advance of Thursday’s Spirit Airlines shareholders meeting, a last ditch effort.

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Man Airdrops Photos Of His Private Parts On Southwest Plane, Gets Exposed

by Gary Leff

free electronics
Jun 27 2022

A Southwest Airlines passenger was accused of airdropping photos of his genetalia to other passengers on the plane.

AirDrop is a way for Apple devices to share photos. Other Apple users can choose to receive or not receive photos, or limit who can send them to you. But many leave the setting open, though I don’t know anyone that would accept files sent by someone they did not know.

A woman sitting across from him got an airdrop notification on her phone. She saw the man airdropping photos on his phone. She looked at the photo and asked if he meant to send it.

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Forget Priests, Therapists, It’s TSA Screeners That Know Our Deepest Secrets

by Gary Leff

Jun 27 2022

The TSA can rifle through your luggage at will and will pull sex toys out of your bags in front of other passengers. You walk through machines that take naked images and screeners get to fondle you if they find you attractive.

TSA even had a program to follow ordinary passengers and mark down when they used the bathroom. But perhaps there’s nothing more intimate than having your pancake mix obsession revealed as the price of domestic travel.

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