Virgin Atlantic flight VS8 from Los Angeles to London hit 801 miles per hour over Pennsylvania yesterday.
A ground speed of 801 miles per hour (obtained only briefly, as the plane remained in the jet streak only a brief period of time) is faster than the speed of sound (767 miles per hour). However the 787 wasn’t actually breaking the sound barrier as it was not moving 767 miles per hour faster than the surrounding air.
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.
A Singapore Airlines passenger took to twitter to share that he had discovered his inflight entertainment system appeared to have a camera installed in it. There has been a ton of media pickup of this.
I’m not aware of any inflight entertainment systems currently in service that are actually ‘spying’ on passengers, though some airlines do have cameras in their cabins.
The saga of a man on a Paris – Los Angeles flight coming out of the coach restroom in his boxer shorts and spending the flight just letting it all hang out was chronicled on twitter yesterday.
There are a couple of things that make this story even more bizarre. Somehow a ukulele is involved. And flight attendants refused to ask him to put clothes on. Even when he got cold he left his pants off, but put on a puffy jacket.
More premium services on offer are better and American Airlines just announced several. It can be better to buy LAX private terminal access via American, in conjunction with a premium flight, than to buy it direct. Whether helicopter transfers represent a deal is more questionable. Both offerings have been done by competitors over the past two years.
The more innovative piece is monetizing access to their excellent Flagship lounge and dining products, which is a nice perk for those interested in paying the freight. The only downside here is increased usage.
In October I wrote that I expected Wyndham to abandon their one price for all hotel awards and move to a tiered award chart.
Specifically four years ago they introduced 15,000 points per night at all hotels and when they introduced redemptions for timeshares and vacation rentals those were also priced at 15,000 points (per bedroom) per night.
That’s happening. They’re also tweaking elite benefits and adding new earning and redemption partners. And there’s a last chance to transfer La Quinta points without losing half their value.
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’s Next Top Model winner Nyle DiMarco claims United Airlines had a wheelchair meet him on arrival because he’s deaf, as though that means he’s unable to walk through the airport on his own. The man also won Dancing With the Stars.
Oddly this keeps happening to DiMarco and he can’t strictly speaking just blame United here. In December he made news when Delta did the same thing. Which suggests to me the airline isn’t likely the one deciding on their own to assist him with a wheelchair.
I’ve argued that the biggest threat to rewards credit cards is that interchange fees, the percentage of each transaction that the banks and payment networks take, will fall.
However the opposite seems to be happening. TVisa, Mastercard, and Discover are set to raise interchange rates slightly this spring.
At an employee question and answer session with American Airlines leadership this past week American’s Vice President – Planning, Vasu Raja, talked about my post about the airline’s service cuts at New York JFK. He defends focusing on flying to hubs, a limited number of international destinations, and smaller cities where they have a strong customer base.
American has withdrawn from being a player in the New York market, with each retrenchment helping to accelerate the next retrenchment. American can no longer compete for the wallet share of business customers, and is only able to pick up business on a limited set of routes. As a result customers can’t remain loyal to the carrier and pay a revenue premium to go out of their way to do so, but choose it when they represent the best choice (with their limited schedule or based on price) on a one-off basis.
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 »
