Saturday night’s United Shanghai – Newark flight, UA87, was delayed a couple of hours when a man (not identified, but speculated to be a professor at Southwest University of Finance and Economics) engaged in one of the most persistent self-upgrade schemes I’ve seen.
The man was apparently caught multiple times trying to seat himself in business class, and apparently stole champagne from up front and drank it walking through the aisles.
Hyatt is letting members know that Gold Passport systems will be down next Tuesday through Friday. But the details here are more significant than that. No redemptions while the systems are down, of course, but also points won’t start posting to accounts again until the week of December 28th. That means…
Silvercar starts accepting reservations at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport starting today for rentals beginning January 4.
There’s a Virgin America promotion code with Silvercar for $75 off a 2-day rental for first time Silvercar users, and Silvercar offers $25 to first-time renters who are referred by existing customers. Those work anywhere.
Luxury Travel Diary, a high-end travel blog with great reviews based in the UK, has a bunch of travel auctions — some about to close, others extend into October — and there look to be some real bargains.
They wanted to highlight some of these, and offered to help organize a giveaway of a 3 night stay in a 3-bedroom luxury apartment in London for readers of this blog. I suppose that folks who already know about these auctions don’t like this added attention, because frankly there aren’t enough bidders relative to the value of the offerings and some of these items go too cheap.
A Jordanian man traveling on a US passport on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Belgrade “cried out that he wished to join Allah along with all the passengers.”
Apparently he was demanding access to the cockpit. When that didn’t work he insisted he wanted to open the plane’s outer door. The man was overpowered by flight crew and the Serbian handball team.
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.
The Kuwait Airways pilot who let a porn star play with his controls in the cockpit on a London – New York flight has lost his pilots license.
There’s been an epidemic of pilots getting fired for inviting female stars into the cockpit (or flight attendants). There’s usually at least an incriminating selfie, if not a video.
Since the TSA doesn’t actually catch prohibited items going through security checkpoints with any regularity, there are worries that pushing people through PreCheck lanes that haven’t been pre-vetted is problematic. (Although these worries require you to believe that regular security is more likely to catch problems.)
So the TSA has scaled back ‘managed inclusion’ so that TSA employees no longer pick people out of line to send them through PreCheck. Instead, only TSA dogs (as interpreted by TSA employees) do so.
With fewer people going through PreCheck lanes, TSA has cut back their hours. But if PreCheck is closed, you’re not out of luck. Here’s what to do.
Wednesday’s Alaska Airlines Seattle – Santa Rosa flight landed on a deer. And passengers didn’t even know.
The single strangest policy of any frequent flyer program is being eliminated.
Some programs have expiring miles (for instance, miles earned today will expire in 3 years if unused). Other programs have expiring accounts (accounts will become inactive if there’s no earning or redemption within 18 or 36 months). In either case, activity in your account can extend the life of your miles or in the extreme only some of your miles will expire on a given date.
One airline has had a policy far more draconian than either of those things.
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 »
