Bilt Rewards just announced Bed Bath & Beyond as a new partner, which mostly made me wonder how Bed Bath & Beyond is still around. It turns out the answer involves Overstock buying the dead retailer’s name, buybuy BABY getting reacquired, Reality TV’s Marcus Lemonis taking over, and one of the strangest corporate reincarnation stories in retail.
The easy part of keeping a business credit card is earning the signup bonus. The real question is whether it still makes sense once the first-year math is over, and for me the AAdvantage Business card still earns enough extra value through AAdvantage Business miles and Loyalty Points to justify the annual fee.
Hotels keep building bathrooms with glass walls, barn doors, and almost no privacy because those rooms look bigger, brighter, and more luxurious in photos. The problem is not that hotels do not know guests hate this design — it is that marketing, perceived space, and cheaper construction keep winning over comfort.
A top Marriott Bonvoy elite says he was jailed after reporting a threat against his wife at the Ritz-Carlton Doha, plus a woman caught bringing pot into Indonesia launching a GoFundMe and Cosplay Kid Rock and the most Frontier Airlines gate agent ever on Denver’s A concourse.
On May 1, Bilt will run a Rent Day transfer bonus to 3 Avios programs: British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Iberia. As usual, the bonus amount is based on your Bilt Rewards status.
United CEO Scott Kirby did not just admit he tried to buy American Airlines — he published the sales pitch after American had already said no. That is not how companies usually talk about dead deals, and the real audience now is what’s interesting about the message.
The proposed Spirit rescue is no longer just about one failing airline. Budget carriers are now pitching a $2.5 billion taxpayer relief program that could leave the government owning stakes across the low-cost sector, turning a dubious bailout into a much bigger attempt to socialize losses across an industry that has not solved its underlying problems.
A United flight attendant was injured on a work trip, went on medical leave, and later received a company letter telling her she had an extra year to return before losing her job. Then United told her the date in its own letter was wrong, fired her anyway, and even tried to stick her with legal costs after she sued.
The simple story about Spirit Airlines is that the Biden administration killed the carrier by blocking JetBlue’s bid to buy it, but that is too neat and mostly wrong. Spirit was already failing because its costs rose, its product stopped matching what customers wanted, and the antitrust move that really undercut any plausible rescue came earlier, when the government killed JetBlue’s alliance with American.
American Airlines is changing its portable charger policy on May 1, requiring power banks to stay visible and within reach during flights instead of hidden in bags or overhead bins. The airline will also cap passengers at two power banks each and ban recharging them onboard, part of a broader push to make battery fires easier for crews to spot and contain.
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 »
