Monthly Archives for March 2023.
The hotel doesn’t seem to really follow standard Hilton rules for award availability. Instead they seem to dump a lot of inventory all at once all of a sudden. That just happened, and now there’s availability starting in November 2023, getting really good in December 2023, and wide open for January – March 2024.
The Department of Transportation entered into an agreement to approve the “Northeast Alliance” between American Airlines and JetBlue, indeed wrung concessions out of the two airlines before doing so (giving up takeoff and landing slots in New York, and a commitment to expand supply of seats in the market with larger aircraft under penalty of losing even more slots to other airlines).
Then, after the alliance moved forward, the Department of Justice Continue Reading »
Given what we know about American’s tendency to operate shorter flights, and to try to fly where others aren’t operating, I’d expect that American’s entry into Africa would be a close-in destination along the lines of Casablanca – which also offers connectivity beyond Morocco and which clocks in at under 4,000 miles. That will allow them to fly the Airbus A321XLR rather than a more expensive widebody.
Two American Airlines passengers met for the first time when they found themselves seated beside each other. There must have been an instant attraction. They both decided to order wine during drink service. And, inhibitions relaxed, they decided to put their feelings on display for the rest of the cabin, “all over each other” in the words of the passenger seated beside them. The man started massaging the woman’s feet.
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 parent company of The Points Guy, Red Ventures, has been using AI to write articles on some of the sites that it owns like CNet and Bankrate. The tools for this aren’t very good yet – they produce numerous errors – but they will become good soon.
President Biden’s nominee to head the FAA, Denver airport chief Phil Washington, has withdrawn from the nomination process. I was, frankly, surprised to see him re-nominated in January after a Democrat-controlled Senate saw him as too vulnerable to move forward with a hearing in 2022. And though he led the Biden Presidential campaign’s Department of Transportation transition, he hardly seemed the best fit for the role.
The Marriott Key Bridge was the second Marriott hotel ever, and was the oldest Marriott hotel when it closed in July 2021.
Originally opened in 1959 as the Key Bridge Motor Inn, it was located in Rosslyn just across the river from Washington D.C. It featured a fantastic view, as a result, and in its history hosted both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. In recent times it played host to the homeless.
When Marriott launched the Bonvoy program in 2018 the most expensive redemption for any hotel was 60,000 points. Then they introduced ‘high and low season’ pricing and a new more expensive category 8, pushing up the most expensive reward to 100,000 points.
A year ago they abolished award charts altogether and promised only that price increases would be muted in the first year of the new system. Now that the first year has passed, gloves and constraints are off, and properties can cost up to 150,000 points per night.
Etihad’s Airbus A380 is returning to the skies, and with it their “First Apartment” which are among the most impressive inflight suites in the world. And award space is currently wide open on the London Heathrow – Abu Dhabi route with as many as 9 award seats per flight in some cases (book the whole cabin), and up to two daily flights on the aircraft.
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 »
