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 Airlines is running all of its Europe and deep South America flights from New York JFK with Boeing 777s. That’s too much capacity even for a joint venture partner’s hub like Madrid (Iberia). They really ought to be basing some smaller aircraft, like Boeing 787s, out of New York and serving more destinations profitably.
During peak summer months and during fall and winter holidays there’s often fare compression, business class tickets go down in price (especially for restricted fares that leisure flyers can buy) while coach gets more expensive. We’re certainly seeing that on American’s New York JFK – Madrid route, where they’re discounting business class. For about the same money you can also fly their partner Iberia’s business class non-stop as well.
A little over a month ago we learned that Korean Air would be dropping first class from many of its routes.
While Korean Air’s first class lags in quality behind many other Asian carriers, I’ve especially liked that I could fly to Asia in first class and connect onward in first class as well because much of their intra-Asia route network offered a first class cabin.
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.
The viral video of an American Airlines employee yelling at one of their mechanics turns out to be from back in November.
This not safe for work video is a snippet of a supervisor yelling at a mechanic over writing up items on an aircraft and then not fixing them, because the mechanic’s shift was apparently over. I didn’t cover the video when it was making the rounds at the beginning of the week because there just wasn’t enough context around it. Now we know the story.
Hyatt is offering co-brand credit card cardmembers 10% back on redemptions made between July 1 and September 2, 2019.
The rebate applies to free night awards, cash and points awards, room upgrades, dining and spa services, Exhale classes and spa therapies, and FIND experiences.
What if you want to earn the miles but don’t want someone sleeping in your bed and doing goodness knows what else in your home? Maybe I shouldn’t literally list my home and have my wife rent it, we have the same last name, but her parents have a different last name. 30,000 Avios for the fees associated with a one night rental is a pretty good deal.
At the end of the Obama administration significant sanctions on Iran were lifted. We started to see a flurry of economic activity including a deal to buy 80 Boeing aircraft. There was even talk of Iran Air breathing life into the Airbus A380 program. Those hopes were dashed with the re-introduction of sanctions by the current administration.
Yet Iran commercial aviation managed to keep to the skies, in part because of ‘smuggling’ of aircraft parts into the country.
We all know the usual tropes, like ‘there are only two kinds of luggage: carry on and lost’ and that someone who checks a bag for a trip every week is spending at least 2 days a year at baggage claim. Checking bags is something you want to avoid if you possibly can.
Here’s how to avoid being forced to gate check a bag when the contents inside are too important to risk.
On Monday I wrote about an incident of American Airlines serving 16 month old food on a Dallas Fort-Worth – London flight. That’s, apparently, within the industry norm. United says they’ll serve food up to 6 months after it’s been frozen. Delta says they don’t usually have food sitting this long but it can be up to 12 months.
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 »
