News and notes from around the interweb:
- Expertflyer has a new premium plan that lets you search 330 days of American Airlines systemwide upgrade availability (score!). They’re also raising prices on their other tiers.
But they’re making the system more robust, with more allowable automated alerts for available seats and awards, and better seat maps in partnership with AeroLOPA.
- The world’s deepest, darkest hotel room is closing.
- Passenger scolds someone else’s misbehaving child…
View on Threads
- It doesn’t appear that this seat was assigned by United as a required accommodation under the Air Carrier Access Act, so re-assigning it to another passenger wouldn’t be a violation. Purchasing a seat because of a need, that wasn’t part of a plan discussed with the airline in advance, doesn’t trigger ACAA obligations. Terrible situation, though.
@United, I paid for First Class specifically for a medical necessity, Spinal Stenosis. Downgrading me to Economy is a violation of the Air Carrier Access Act (14 CFR 382) and puts my health at risk. I need the seat I purchased. Check DMs for PNR. #UnitedAirlines #DisabilityRights
— Blythe Ayne (@BlytheAyne) March 4, 2026
- Applications open for London – Chicago O’Hare remedy slots
- 30% bonus transferring Chase points to Wyndham Rewards, though I cannot fathom why you’d want to. (Ok, there are some truly edge cases.)
- After recommending Elephant Jumps in Merrifield, Virginia for 15 years – it really was arguably the best Thai in the United States and kept getting better, year after year – the restaurant has been sold. The owners are returning to Thailand, and say the new owners are “good people and their team has done excellent job on cooking. My wife and I had personally tried their Pad Thai and Laos-style Papaya Salad. And we love it. ”
During the pandemic, the owner shared with me his experiences going through 14-day mandatory quarantine after flying to Bangkok.
OMG durian ice cream @elephantjumps pic.twitter.com/uNaXpJUNOK
— gary leff (@garyleff) April 13, 2014
- Enilria points out that new Delta Air Lines President Peter Carter comes out of Government Affairs and legal, and that this may imply their key strategy going forward to push mergers, lobby to block competitive access to gates and slots, and seek tax breaks.
- Expedia’s Hotels.com in the U.K. drops the ‘unified rewards program across brands’ OneKey, reverting to the ‘stay 10, get 1 free’ model that preceded it. OneKey has largely been a disaster because it’s so unrewarding.
Well, Gary, does this make it seem like SWU are akin to GUCs or more like PlusPoints, as in, relatively worthless?
Gary, how would one go about discussing the special need for the first class seat (after buying an F ticket). Say with American and Delta.
Wish I had tried Elephant Jumps Thai as I’m sure it will change. My personal favorite Thai restaurant in the US is Jitlada in LA. I especially like the spicier Southern Thai dishes at the back of the menu. Some of these you likely won’t see at other US Thai restaurants.
@ 1990 — The availability of AA SWUs is the worst of the three big airlines’ international upgrade instruments. The Expertflyer changes are worthless additions designed to distract you from a 32% price increase. Glad mine renews tomorrow so I can at least use it for one more year at $99.99 before cutting if off.
This “new” tool is unlikely to work reliably for AA international flights, since neither does the current tool. AA uses fare class C for SWU-upgradeable inventory, but they also use C for some revenue seats on international flights (as I’ve confirmed in discussions with AA ExecPlat agents about this over the years). Thus, searching on expertflyer for fare class C often leads to false positives. For example, as a test this morning I searched on expertflyer for class C on LAX-LHR on June 17. It returns C7 on AA134 and AA136, availability of at least 7 seats in class C on both flights. But a using aa.com’s search, there is no SWU upgrade availability.
Note that aa.com will show SWU upgrade availability only if you have one or more unused SWUs in your account. I double-checked my aa.com result on the above test by checking SFO-LAX-LHR, where it showed upgrade availability for SFO-LAX but not LAX-LHR.
I wouldn’t waste money on the expertflyer upgrade unless they can prove that they are not just looking for fare class C, but also have a way to eliminate the many, many false positives.
@ John W — Based on past experience withe ExpertFlyer, I am guessing their tool will just show the same as what AA shows. This “new” feature is of zero value.
Condolences on the durian ice cream. That makes Jager and orange juice sound delicious.
I like the new idea with Expertflyer in theory but can’t find any info about how to get the new tier as an existing annual member who has prepaid until late this year. Paying twice doesn’t sound very appealing.
@ Christian — If you click on the upgrade button and go to the billing, it will show you the net amount due after subrtacting the value of your remaining subscription (to the day, I believe) from the price of the higher-cost subscription. That info is shown before actually paying (which I didn’t!).