Monthly Archives for December 2022.
British Airways has introduced a ‘Reward Flight Saver’ option for long haul premium cabin travel that – as long as you’ve earned at least 1 Avios in the last 12 months – lets you pay more miles for substantially reduced surcharges.
Southwest Airlines is offering a 25% discount on tickets booked by December 7 for travel December 24-25 and December 31, 2022 and January 1, 2023. These are the Saturdays and Sundays of holiday weekend, and generally less-traveled days since many people will be taking off on Friday and Monday. Use promotion code HOLIDAY25 to get the discount. You’ll see a ‘strike-through’ of the original fare on eligible flights. Not all flights will have discountable inventory. Two key points: Since Southwest awards can be cancelled with points redeposited with no fee, you can make speculative redemption bookings to take advantage of this offer. If you have existing tickets you want to reprice, check the new price and then cancel/rebook. Seeing Southwest make a move to try to fill seats this late in the game suggests that…
There’s a debate, mostly in Europe, over whether to ban frequent flyer programs for the environment because: flying contributes to carbon emissions, frequent flyer programs encourage flying, and it’s inequitable that some people get to fly and destroy the environment while others don’t.
Hyatt’s Andaz brand launched 15 years ago, and first gave us the Andaz Liverpool Street in London, the Andaz West Hollywood, and Andaz 5th Avenue in New York. One of the core elements of the brand has been that non-alcoholic beverages and snacks in the room are complimentary. That’s no longer the case.
On CNBC this morning United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said he likes that pilot wages are going up, which is really saying he likes pilot shortages, because of what that does to competitors. Low cost carriers can’t hire pilots cheap, eroding their relative cost advantage against United.
He also revealed something interesting about business travel: it’s not continuing its recovery, and specifically that it has “plateaued”.
You’d think an operation called Alaska Airlines would be able to handle cooler temperatures but they’re misdirecting so many bags they’re unwilling to honor their on-time bag delivery guarantee.
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 CEO of Bahrain-based Gulf Air says the carrier will launch direct flights to the U.S. within 3 years. We can expect that new Gulf Air service to the U.S. to be on Boeing 787-9 aircraft.
The airline’s CEO describes himself as being on a mission to deliver a quality product as a path towards profits because his smaller airline can’t compete on network scale and it cannot compete on price either.
American Airlines was showing that basic economy fares didn’t include a carry on bag to some customers checking in, though they hadn’t updated their website or made any announcement to this effect.
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 »
