American Airlines and the federal government have reached an undisclosed agreement over how to divide liability and costs from the DCA midair collision that killed 67 people. The NTSB blamed the Army helicopter crew and FAA/tower failures, not American’s pilots, but passenger and crew lawsuits still leave major money at stake and now the public does not get to know how American and the feds agreed to split it.
FlightAware sued betting market Kalshi over its flight cancellation prediction markets on Monday, which use FlightAware data to resolve the outcomes. And then they dismissed the case on Tuesday. I didn’t have that on my bingo card, but it suggests to me that they’ve quickly settled.
U.S. Bank has finally added transfer partners for Altitude Reserve cardmembers, starting with Flying Blue, Accor, Qantas, and Ethiopian ShebaMiles. The partner list is small and oddly limited to a card no longer open to new applicants, but Ethiopian’s fifth-freedom awards create the most surprising new sweet spot — including 15,000-mile business class redemptions on select routes.
Chase is offering a 20% transfer bonus to Air Canada Aeroplan, and Aeroplan credit cardholders can stack that with their standard 10% transfer bonus on larger transfers. That creates a useful award-booking opportunity — and, for cardholders using Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back for travel, a way to turn Chase points into as much as 1.625 cents apiece in value.
Citi premium card looks complicated at first, but the real value is straightforward once you know how the credits post. The Strata Elite’s hotel, Splurge, Blacklane, Priority Pass, and Admirals Club benefits can make the first cardmember year far more lucrative than the $595 fee suggests.
American Airlines retired its relatively young Airbus A330-200s during the pandemic, leaving itself short of long-haul aircraft just as international demand returned. Now two of those ex-American jets belong to Israir, which plans to use them for Tel Aviv–New York service — potentially bringing American’s old planes back to a market American itself still has not resumed.
An Indian lawmaker is being mocked for supposedly demanding that Boeing and Airbus redesign aircraft with separate bathrooms for men and women. Her actual letter asks airlines to designate one existing lavatory women-only and clean all of them more often—a real sanitation problem wrapped in a policy likely to create new capacity, enforcement and gender-definition problems.
American Airlines’ automated rebooking system keeps removing passengers from flights when it predicts they will miss a connection, even when they still make it to the gate in time. The result is that seats get released to someone else, passengers are turned away from flights they could have boarded, and American may owe involuntary denied boarding compensation when its algorithm gets it wrong.
United CEO Scott Kirby says there may be room for only two premium U.S. airlines, but passengers keep posting photos and complaints that make United’s own case harder. Also new Priority Pass-accessible grab-and-go Atlanta “lounge,” a DCA shutdown for the DC Grand Prix, Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City inspection issues, and a car hitting an aircraft at Milan Linate.
Delta flight 591 from Las Vegas to Atlanta became a post-DEF CON Wi-Fi scare after the crew reported that passengers had created a fake “Delta WiFi Fast” network and “jammed” the inflight internet. The plane itself does not appear to have been at risk, but phishing passengers, disrupting onboard Wi-Fi, or impersonating Delta’s network could still create serious legal trouble.
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 »
