This is much better than the olden days when everyone on a plane watched the same thing because there were just overhead monitors, and one thing playing on all of them. On an American Airlines flight from Sydney to Honolulu to Dallas back in 1991 they kept playing John Goodman’s King Ralph over and over – and I wanted to impeach the airline’s Vice President of Inflight.
It’s sad that United maintained they weren’t making changes to partner award pricing – and then did so immediately on the very day they eliminated close-in booking fees in cash.
As a general matter they appear to be charging more for close-in redemption of United flights, too – so there’s no ‘fee’ for close-in booking, just a mileage penalty.
First we had deceptive resort fees – part of the room rate is hidden, called a fee, and you don’t see it included in the total cost of a room when you’re comparing hotel rates on a website. Resort fees spread to hotels that aren’t resorts. In cities they started to call resort fees urban destination fees.
I thought we had reached peak absurdity with the spread in Las Vegas of ‘venue fees’.
When I covered this new type of fee back in September I asked, ‘Karl Marx said history repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce. If venue fees is hotels repeating the resort fee as tragedy, can the farce be far behind?” Apparently we’ve already reached farce.
The aviation world is excited about the 2020 release of Microsoft’s new version of Flight Simulator. But that’s not the only aviation game coming out soon.
The world is about to get a taste of Airplane Mode – a six hour trip as a passenger on board a transatlantic flight which occurs in real time.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
I’m genuinely excited by this, although I worry I’ll spend way too much time on this. I don’t play video games, it’s not a part of my life. That might be about to change.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
American announced today that they’re closing their Tokyo Narita Admirals Club “around late March 2020,” with premium services agents moving over to work at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. This club was large, and had huge windows and plenty of light, but wasn’t as nice as the nearby Japan Airlines club.
If you’re new to frequent flyer miles, the single fastest way to rack up miles quickly is with a rewards credit card. Roughly two-thirds of miles are earned with activities other than flying and the number one way is through credit cards.
The best rewards programs are the ones that let you transfer points to your choice of airlines. You pick later where to put the miles.
Expedia is about the last travel company to do anything pro-consumer and yet with its muscle it could come late into the game and make a real difference.
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 »
