Italian carrier Meridiana has been in the news for its rebranding as Air Italy. The Qatar Airways-backed carrier is taking on bankrupt Alitalia to become Italy’s national airline. It’s upgrading its fleet and services and has a massive growth plan.
And right now there’s a $600 roundtrip business class fare between Cairo and New York JFK.
It was supposedly a card that finally figured out how to attract millennials when the truth is it was just a card that offered more total value than most that had ever come before and whose initial marketing was primarily online so new applicants skewed younger.
The value was so rich that word on the street was Chase didn’t even ever expect to make money on a new cardholder until they held the product for 6 or 7 years.
One of the great benefits of many premium travel rewards cards is trip delay coverage. If your flight is delayed — the length of delay required varies — you can send the bill to your credit card company’s insurance provider for things like transportation to and from a hotel, your room night, and meals.
Hyatt explicitly lets members gift their elite status to friends when they book awards in someone else’s name.
But booking a paid reservation for someone else using your own account is verboten. Frequently some members will book a stay in their own name and add a friend as a second guest on the reservation.
United Airlines sent a memo to employees yesterday telling them they would no longer receive their quarterly bonuses of up to $300.
Instead when United hits at least one of four performance metrics they all get entered in a lottery.
As governors around the country flirt with the idea of luring Delta’s headquarters out of Georgia now that lawmakers there are refusing to give them fuel tax subsidies they’ve lobbied for — and some are even offering to back the truck up as it were (Connecticut’s governor says they “are committed to doing whatever necessary to help make this relocation a reality.”) — consider that Delta doesn’t just devalue SkyMiles they renege on deals with governors, too.
United Airlines has 14 more gates than American at Chicago O’Hare. American is opening 5 new gates that they paid for, reducing the gap to 9. But the new O’Hare expansion plan re-opens the gap and returns United to a 14 gate advantage.
American isn’t losing gates. They are complaining that United is gaining gates. But American is refusing to sign a new lease under these terms.
The aviation world was apoplectic this week at the suggestion that President Trump’s personal pilot John Dunkin could be named to head the FAA. It may have just been payback for the FAA eliminating navigation waypoints named for Trump in 2015. However Trump has been on record for awhile saying the agency should be headed by a pilot.
In this week’s “Tell Me Why” podcast for American Airlines employees, airline CFO Derek Kerr explains why they do not hedge fuel.
I offer a slightly different formulation of Kerr’s answer and it evinces surprising humility and self awareness.
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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 »
