The UK is developing a disruptive passenger blacklist that could let one airline’s ban follow a traveler across other carriers. That may sound appealing when someone assaults crew or forces a diversion, but without clear standards, due process, fixed limits, and meaningful appeal rights, it risks turning airline customer-service disputes into government-coordinated travel bans by private companies.
oneworld elites are getting a new hotel benefit: discounts and status across Taj, The Pierre, St. James Court, Vivanta, Ginger and more than 600 other Indian Hotels Company properties. For American and Alaska elites, this turns airline status into hotel savings and Taj InnerCircle – NeuPass status — while top Taj members can now move the other way into oneworld airline status.
Delta sees Los Angeles as a rare chance to break a long-running three-way fight with American and United, and internal plans point to a bigger push at LAX while its rivals are constrained. American has pulled back, United’s facilities are limited, smaller carriers have shrunk, and Delta wants to turn that opening into more premium customers, more loyalty, and more Amex spend in one of the country’s most valuable travel markets.
The FAA says Spirit’s valuable LaGuardia slots should go to a low-cost airline or be retired entirely, not simply sold to whoever values them most. That is the same central-planning impulse airline regulators keep falling into: trying to engineer competition from Washington instead of using prices to allocate scarce airport capacity and letting airlines prove which business models actually work.
Chase has brought back a 100,000-point bonus on the Ink Business Preferred, giving small-business owners and those of you with a side hustle one of the strongest bank card offers available right now. The card’s $95 annual fee is low for a bonus this large, and the points can be transferred to valuable airline and hotel partners like Hyatt, United, Air France KLM, British Airways, and Singapore Airlines.
American Airlines has now been dropped from the Dow Jones Transportation Average, two years after being kicked out of the S&P 500. Its stock price had fallen so far that it carried less than 0.5% weight in the price-weighted index — while Delta, United, Southwest, and even Alaska remain.
NIH researchers working with high-containment viruses were charged after arriving in Detroit on an Air France flight with 113 undeclared biological sample vials from Congo, including monkeypox. One allegedly told officers, “I do this all the time.”
A Frontier flight from San Juan to Chicago diverted to Miami after a passenger allegedly tried to open an exit door, moved toward the cockpit, choked an off-duty flight attendant, and broke through flex cuffs more than once. Passengers and crew finally held him with seatbelt extenders until landing.
Israeli travelers trying to book a hotel in Bavaria say they received a reply that should be unthinkable in Germany: “Sorry, there are no Jews allowed in our hotel.” The hotel later acknowledged an employee sent the message, apologized, and claimed it was responding to suspected fake bookings — as though “No Jews allowed” were a normal anti-fraud policy rather than exactly what it sounds like.
American Airlines spent the pandemic shrinking into a more domestic, partner-dependent airline, retiring 40% of its long-haul fleet and avoiding new widebody orders for years. Now, as management tries to reposition American as a premium global carrier, a new widebody order appears back on the table — with Boeing 787s and Airbus A330neos looking more plausible than they have in years.
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 »
