Monthly Archives for January 2023.
I ran into a retail shop at the Austin airport that requires a tip when paying by credit card. This isn’t a sit down restaurant with table service. You pay at the counter, and I was buying a bottle of water.
The payment terminal at the concession requires you to select a tip amount prior to processing your card. $0.00 is not accepted.
Delta lets passengers choose in advance the option to skip a meal, and save the airline money. Japan Airlines even suggests that doing so is a moral imperative.
This is a trend sweeping the industry, reducing food cost by getting passengers to pre-committing not to eat. United is a part of it too, and they are offering customers more than one choice now to nudge them not to eat. Both of these options that appear when pre-ordering mean the same thing, United can spend less on catering.
We can expect a more aggressive approach that pulls whatever tools are convenient in pushing for greater competition in transportation policy.
New refund rules and fee disclosure rules are already pending at the Department of Transportation.
On January 24th, American Airlines flight attendants will be conducting ‘informational picketing’ at the airline’s hubs and also in Boston and San Francisco. They’re unhappy with the time it’s taken to get a new contract, and that American Airlines flat out rejects many of the changes to work rules their union proposes.
American, for its part, has been telling cabin crew that on the same day as the picketing they’ll be serving free chili inside the airport instead.
Delta is back on top. Perennial strong competitor Alaska is right behind though they had numerous operational problems. Southwest comes in third – even though they completely failed over the holidays (recency bias!) and their on-time performance frequently lags with shorter turn times for aircraft. JetBlue is consistently an operational mess, here worse than Spirit and Frontier.
While I expect Delta to tout its win, note the subheading is “No one airline had a particularly good year.”
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.
Hilton’s Conrad Maldives has standard room award availability nearly every day from mid-May through September. And for anyone with any elite status, even Silver, fifth night is free on awards.
Originally promised for fall 2022 back in May, the new Air France long haul product launches for the first time from Paris to New York JFK on Friday, January 20, 2023.
With the closure of New York JFK terminal 2 last week, Delta has consolidated its operations in terminal 4. Since that terminal was already crowded – it features the longest lines to get into any Sky Club – that didn’t seem like a positive for customers.
Fortunately relief is on the way for those accessing the Delta club at New York JFK, and not just because the airline is banning employees from using their lounges and charging more for memberships, banning non-elite customers from buying them, taking away access from elites flying coach on international trips and from club members who are flying on basic economy tickets.
VietJet, founded by Vietnam’s first self-made female billionaire, is known for promoting new routes with women wearing bikinis. They’ve developed the reputation as ‘the bikini airline’. However aviation and female sexuality is hardly limited to Asia.
Starlux Airlines is turning their newest Airbus A350 into a fashion show.
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 »
