The U.S. is going to enter talks with the UAE and Qatar about airline subsidies but it doesn’t sound like they’ll amount to much.
The irony of complaining that other airlines were too intertwined with governments always seemed lost on United, who lost a CEO over a scandal involving the airline bribing a government official. Or Delta’s CEO who started all of this going on to run heavily subsidized Amtrak.
With the introduction of the American Airlines Flagship Lounge and Flagship First Dining I think it’s fair to say that Miami goes from a terrible place to connect to a positive place to transit for elites and premium cabin passengers.
Two years after it was announced that Accor would be buying Fairmont, we have details on the demise of the Fairmont Presidents Club program. If you want to familiarize yourself with Accor, three years ago I uploaded the chain’s secret loyalty manual.
To be sure there’s a case for spinoffs: if an airline needs to raise cash, selling assets is one way to do that. And frequent flyer programs are in many cases among the most valuable assets an airline has. It’s just not a free lunch, selling even a part of the program creates frictions that can reduce value. Sometimes an airline needs to do that, but financially healthy airlines should be extremely cautious before doing so.
Delta is looking for a new Manager of Program Strategy for SkyMiles. They’ll be in charge of ‘enhanc[ing]’ the program.
This morning’s American Airlines flight AA662 from Charlotte to San Francisco had to divert to Denver so that passengers could use the bathroom. It’s not the first time a flight has had to do that this month.
The American flight makes for a crazy story, though. The pilot announced to passengers while over Kansas that they were going to divert because of a blockage in the lavatory system. The whole system was constipated.
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 flight attendant is seen (and taped) eating leftover passenger meals.
The person posting this to Facebook analogizes to a restaurant where the chef tastes the food before serving it to the customer to ensure it’s properly seasoned. Plus of course you know if the flight attendant is your food taster, and doesn’t die, the food’s safe.
The new World of Hyatt program was a change to elite qualification and benefits, not really a change to earn and burn. And a year into that program there’s certainly some consternation, and there’s new leadership running loyalty at Hyatt.
In spite of record hotel occupancy Hyatt is tweaking very little for earn and burn, moving only 9 hotels up or down in category (8 up, 1 down).
I do as much of my shopping online as possible to earn shopping portal bonuses, you go online and click a link to a store to earn a rebate for the purchases you’ll make anyway. There are other ways to do this of course, for instance the MileagePlus X app lets you earn United miles for in-store purchases at participating merchants. But online is generally best.
Several times during the year however there will be bonuses that each of the major shopping portal offers. Want to know why they all have similar offers around the same time? Here’s some of the inner workings of mileage-earning shopping portals.
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 »
