News and notes from around the interweb:
- Chicago, Denver, New York and St. Louis – Europe for just 55,000 Lufthansa miles roundtrip in business class
- Dispirited Australia: after losing the trust of the nation, can the Qantas brand bounce back?
- IHG hotels no longer have to provide club access to guests upgraded to club floors unless they’ve claimed the club access membership as a 40 or 70 elite night benefit
- Some places aren’t actually great to visit Nomadic Matt is right on Milan, wrong on Doha. You won’t go back over and over to Qatar, but it’s absolutely worth going once for the Museum of Islamic Art. Even beyond the artifacts, the building itself is art!
- Structure of airline contracts could stand in the way of offering free inflight internet increasingly airlines have been paying ‘per session’ rather than buying metered or flat-fee capacity.
Relative to the per-session model, specifically, [Intelsat SVP, commercial Dave] Bijur warned: “I do think that it leaves the airline exposed to a certain extent. If the whole thing goes free, and I don’t know that it will — I don’t personally think it will — but if the whole thing does go free and you’re an airline, do you really want to be paying by the session? I don’t think so. I don’t think you want to pay by the MB either. I think you pay a flat fee and I think that works.”
Too bad you can’t search availability on Lufthansa without having miles. EF is helpful, but then you can’t hold until you transfer miles which means you risk having trapped miles.
I had the displeasure of LH J class TPA to FRA in May and with thier “blue side out!” Mask stazi I don’t think I’d book it for 10k miles.
Using Lufthansa miles is a great deal as long as Lufthansa does not cancel your flight then leave you stranded in a foreign country for four days plus charge you double the price to return home.
A reminder on how difficult to accumulate Miles and More for those in the US would be helpful.
I’ve noticed that LH transatlantic biz class flights from several cities are going for a considerable savings over BA, AF, DL, and AA. Sometimes the disparity is pretty large, especially when compared to main cabin. I couldn’t figure out what was going on and then a coworker reminded me that they still require masks. Now it makes sense.
It seems that not many people are willing to take TA flight in a mask when given a choice.
Mask requirement would be a plus for me…
I was just in Milan it was great, and not dirty in May.
You are wrong on Milan too. A fantastic food city. Not as much surviving history as Rome or as much Art as Florence or beauty of Venice but it has DaVinci’s, awesome restaurants, fun night life, great subway. Varenna on lake Como is an hour by train, did it as a great day trip. is a
You don’t like Europe travel do you are biased.
Jonathon, the issue is not masks. To some, the world revolves around the issue of masks . . . which then by intention devolves into political warfare. It has become more than tiring to read people still writing about masks as if it is the cause of everything wrong in their lives and society as a whole. Your suggestion suffers from the Post Hoc Fallacy.
The issue is Lufthansa’s abhorrent operational and service record of late. Lufthansa has been experiencing a “perfect storm” of bad news and it appears Lufthansa is doing what it can to keep its customer base. If you are a regular reader of the travel blogs, you should know this.
100% correct Gary. Museum of Islamic Art is amazing and well worth a stop in Doha.
Milan is certainly not one of my favorite Italian cities, but come on, it is not that bad and is certainly better than Doha. I agree that the Museum of Islamic Art is worth seeing and then a walk through the souq, but then you are done – all you really need is a long layover. In Milan, you have the Duomo, the Last Supper, La Scala, and Navigli, and then you have good food and shopping as well, with enough other interesting stuff to at least spend a couple days.
That said, I”m a big believer that every place is interesting to see.
Milan? Really? Try anything Disney more than once, if that.
“In Milan, you have the Duomo, the Last Supper, La Scala … and then you have good food and shopping as well, with enough other interesting stuff to at least spend a couple days.”
Exactly what I did last month with my daughter. It was an outstanding two days. Milan is great, if you have the right expectations.and don’t try to spend a week there.
Flew transatlantic LH business class last month for the first time since pre pandemic, and boy was it disappointing. I’d flown their J before so I knew the seat would suck, but the soft product was really underwhelming – no pre departure drinks, no hot towels, had to flag the FA down for a drink refill (like I actually only had two drinks the entire 8-hour flight; I wasn’t going overboard), and got a big eye roll and sigh late in the flight when I asked for a second bottle of water (after finishing the one at my seat). The seat is better than economy but the rest of the experience felt very Y.
Imagine thinking Nomadic Matt is an authority on which destinations are good or bad lol
Spent a week in Doha on business it is one of the more worthless places I have visited. I’d 10x rather hang out in Milan. It is hard to wrong in Italy