At last week’s American Airlines Media & Investor Day I got a sneak look at the airline’s new coach seats that are spaced more closely together than ever before.
What is American Airlines really trying to tell us with these seats? Reader Megan took a closer look at the way American set up the seat and caught a hidden message.
The King of Saudi Arabia made his first-ever visit to Moscow on Wednesday. On arrival the king’s team rolled up a golden escalator to the plane instead of stairs. Hijinks ensued. After Salman’s plane landed, the Saudis rolled out a golden escalator — instead of stairs — to the plane’s exit door for the king to use as he deplaned.With his head held high, Salman stepped onto the majestic escalator, but a few seconds into his graceful descent, the escalator froze, as if it had been turned off suddenly.Salman stood in place for nearly 30 seconds unsure what to do before finally deciding to walk the rest of the way down. Saudi Arabia king uses golden escalator as a airplane stairs. When he arrived to Moscow yesterday, his golden stairs got stuck. pic.twitter.com/h3o1UD8s8p — English…
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.
Star Alliance member ANA thinks they would generate more business from families if they could help reduce inflight crying. Cynics might suggest they’d be especially likely to win the business of non-families if they could do that.
Earlier in the year I offered a simple model ranking hotel programs.
A new IdeaWorks study (.pdf) finds similar values for each hotel’s currency when searching across real world redemption scenarios. (They don’t include Hyatt in their survey, but do add Wyndham.)
A couple of weeks ago the American Airlines website started asking for a state of residence when you book a ticket.
There’s been a lot of speculation that this has something to do with the REAL ID Act and the expectation that some state drivers licenses will be refused by the TSA for travel starting in January. That’s not what this is for.
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.
Chase has their ‘5/24 rule’ where they won’t approve most new credit cards for many customers with 5 or more new card accounts within the last 24 months.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote that Bank of America was cracking down on issuing new credit cards to customers who have opened several with the bank recently.
The most important customer service lesson I ever learned was on an easel pad in Randy Petersen’s office (“The House of Miles” which was located on Frequent Flyer Point in Colorado Springs) the first time I visited: “Don’t ever say no. What I can do for you is…”
In other words, it’s not enough just to listen to what a customer asks for and tell them whether it’s allowed. You must address their problem. You can’t always give them what they want, but if you understand their needs you can offer a solution that’s the best available given constraints.
There’s an amazing business class roundtrip fare on oneworld airlines between Stockholm, Gothenburg and Oslo and the U.S. Connections are going to be via London Heathrow (British Airways) or Helsinki (Finnair). Travel is available to San Francisco, Chicago, Washington Dulles and perhaps other cities as well.
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 »
