Two Alaska Airlines planes were struck by lightning on Monday in Alaska and taken out of service for routing inspections.
While on average it’s said that every commercial plane is struck by lightning at least once a year, I believe it’s been over 40 years since a crash has been attributed to a lightning strike. The fuselage of a plane will conduct electricity and allow it to trasmit from the strike and generally out the tail.
I’m done with my travels for the year. I’ve requalified as an American Airlines Executive Platinum member (100,000+ miles, I actually hit this back in mid-June) and I hit United Silver but not quite Gold. I’ve flown paid trips on Delta, Southwest, and Virgin America as well (not to mention China Eastern, flydubai, and Maldivian).
Within moments of my 100th night posting to my Starwood account, I received an email welcoming me to the Ambassador program:
I didn’t know Richard Marx was still a thing, I remember Endless Summer Nights and Right Here Waiting from the late 80s, but apparently he had a new single out this year.
He’ll be back in the news shortly, though, for finding himself next to a ‘psycho’ passenger on today’s Korean Air Flight 480 from Hanoi to Seoul.
Alaska Airlines is losing its partnership with Delta. In my view that was a better deal for Delta customers — who could earn more valuable miles crediting to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan when flying on Delta, which worked out well especially for discounted domestic first class — than it was for Alaska Airlines customers who couldn’t even book Delta award seats at half the miles for a one way award.
Nonetheless, Alaska is going to great lengths to make sure its customers come out ahead with their acquisition of Virgin America (so a bigger route network on which to earn and burn) and by reducing the cost of domestic economy short haul awards and increasing mileage-earning on partner premium cabin tickets.
Air traffic control provider NATS has detailed plans for Santa’s ride. In fact you can even enter your own details and see what Santa is bringing you and how he’s going to get there
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Virgin America has announced that conversion of Elevate points to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan will be at 1:1.3. You’ll get 1.3 Alaska Airlines miles for every 1 Virgin America mile.
And they’ll announce how to move miles on January 9.
Losing the ability to redeem miles on Delta flights is a small hit. Delta’s transatlantic award availability can be pretty decent especially during low season and on really lightly booked flights.
The real hit is no longer being able to credit Delta flights — especially cheap Delta domestic first class flights — to a Mileage Plan account. It was possible to fly a decent reliable domestic airline in Delta while still earning valuable miles instead of earning SkyMiles.
There’s a big upside to all of this, though.
Alaska Airlines acquired Virgin America and becomes the nation’s 5th largest airline with enough heft to compete against the ‘big 4’ at least on the West Coast.
They were forced by the Department of Justice to limit their codesharing with American Airlines. However Alaska and Delta are walking away from partnering with each other entirely.
Two weeks ago Pakistan International Airlines suffered a crash of an ATR 42 turboprop. After the incident they grounded their ATR fleet, and subbed in C-130 military cargo planes flying passengers on benches because those planes are able to operate at some of the country’s more challenging airports.
Before bringing the ATRs back into service, PIA employees sacrificed a goat next to a plane at the Islamabad International Airport.
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 »
