News and notes from around the interweb: Get free access to the new Regus lounge at London Heathrow’s terminal 5 $17 off access to the new Plaza Premium lounge in London Heathrow’s Terminal 2 Someone’s been shot at your hotel. What should management do next? (HT: Alan H) Your Uber Driver Reviews You DEA improperly paid an Amtrak employee ~ $850,000 for confidential passenger information that it could have gotten free Next week an Aloft hotel near Apple’s corporate campus will begin testing a robot bellhop. (HT: Alan H.) Woman tries to stop a plane at Halifax airport because she thought her husband was cheating. You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to…
About Gary Leff
A New Twist on Keeping Kids from Crying Inflight: Clowns
Here’s how not to handle crying children on a plane. Because while crying children who just won’t stop is a perennial challenge for both parents and for other passengers, beating up other peoples’ kids just won’t end well for anybody. El Al has an innovative solution, though. Clowns. On daytime flights with clowns, including Westbound to New York during the summer, a clown: …roams the aisles, telling stories and riddles to children and handing out coloring books, crayons and games. The clown also selects 10 children on each flight to serve as clown assistants and, as a reward for completing a variety of assignments, those children get to visit the captain in the cockpit. This is apparently not even new. And somehow I didn’t know about it. Presumably the endeavor continues because fear of clowns…
Star Alliance Gold Status With Just One Roundtrip!
Next week — on August 20 — SAS is launching new all-business class service between Houston and Stavanger, Norway operated by Privatair 6 days a week (every day except Saturdays). The flight will be on a 737 configured with 44 seats. Houston is already the number one business destination SAS operates, based on customer surveys, with nearly four-fifths of travel between Scandinavia and the US energy hub being business-related. Bonusfeber has details of the offer and fortunately Google Chrome does a nice job translating. Even better, it pointed me to the offer itself in English on SAS’ website. Register by August 28 and fly between August 20 and October 31, and then: one roundtrip gives you EuroBonus Gold status two roundtrips gives you EuroBonus Diamond status EuroBonus Gold is Star Alliance Gold which means lounge…
Marriott’s MegaBonus ‘Two Stays Earns a Free Night’ Promotion Returns Tomorrow
Marriott will bring back its MegaBonus promotion tomorrow. This is usually, for most members, ‘two stays earns a free night’ which: Can be earned up to two times And redeemed for stays at any participating Marriott property up to category 4. Some people get targeted for redemptions up to category 5. Others get targeted for bonus point offers. Bonus point offers may be something like: Stay 25 nights during the promotion period and earn 45,000 points Stay 20 nights during the promotion period and earn 35,000 points Earn double points after your second stay up to 25,000 points Especially for elite members, Marriott has in the past been willing to switch members on request to an offer other than what they were targeted for but their willingness to do so varies. You’ll be able to…
The New American Express Centurion Lounge Has Opened!
Last week I attended a pre-opening dinner at American Express’ new Centurion lounge at New York LaGuardia. It’s a fantastic space, smaller than the other Centurion lounges, which makes sense given its purpose — LaGuardia isn’t a ‘long layover’ airport. At the time of the dinner American Express didn’t have a firm opening date. Construction was done, permits were in hand, but they were still working out final service details. A little birdie tells me that the lounge is now open, as of 6am this morning. Access rules: The lounge can be accessed by: Centurion and Platinum cardholders: Cardmember may bring in their spouse and children or two guests Other American Express cardholders: $50 per adult (children complimentary when accompanied by paying adult) Hours: The lounge is open from 6am to 8pm daily. Location: The…
Here’s How Much Partner Redemptions Cost US Airways Dividend Miles
Yesterday I shared the internal numbers from American AAdvantage — the number of members, how many miles they’re awarding, and how many unredeemed and unexpired miles are left. Most importantly, we can see how those have changed year-over-year for a long period to understand how the program is being managed. US Airways doesn’t provide nearly as much detail as American does about their frequent flyer program’s economics. That said, looking back at old SEC filings, I found that their 2010 10-K filing had much that was fascinating. They assumed 11% of awards would be redeemed on partner airlines. (That contrasts with 16% for Alaska Airlines) Each 1% of redemptions on partners was projected to cost US Airways $8 million. US Airways believed the average mile earned was redeemed in 28 months. There’s more recent data,…
Here’s Today’s Frequent Flyer News Not to Miss
News and notes from around the interweb: Barb DeLollis reminds us that United’s plan to improve performance by ditching 50 seat regional jets has been their narrative for 8 years. The bed bugs at United’s corporate headquarters have apparently been contained. This is not a way I would recommend earning miles. Alaska Airlines is doing very well despite erstwhile partner Delta’s ramp-up in Seattle. Alaska is replacing most of the partnership’s revenue loss, including with a 20% increase in revenue from their American Airlines partnership. TSA Nude-o-Scopes have backdoor passwords and one could, it’s claimed, even be accessed via the internet. Recent improvement to the American Airlines mobile app Forget the negativity: air miles offer ‘an Earthly paradise’. Now that Air India is a member of the Star Alliance, I found this Air India first…
Is US Airways Charging Taxes They Shouldn’t… And Even Keeping the Money for Itself?
In my post highlighting the current 100% US Airways bonus for buying miles that’s open to many, John asked, Why does US Air collect a 7.5% gov’t tax for shared miles promo? Delta does not. The feds DO NOT collect a tax for shared/transferred miles. When you ‘share miles‘ (transfer your miles to someone else), US Airways charges you: $0.01 per mile plus a processing fee of $30 and a tax recovery charge of 7.5% (Emphasis mine.) Should US Airways be charging tax, when nobody else does? Or is it a junk fee, lining their pockets, under the guise of a tax?
Brazilian Family Under Investigation Over $17 Million in Manufactured Spend
Reader Denis passes along this story (Portugese) about a family under criminal investigation over manufactured spend. It’s not clear from the article how laws would have been broken. Google translates the charges as, Gang, embezzlement, forgery, use of false documents and money laundering. Apparently they earn only about $740 per month but managed to generate ~ $17 million in credit card charges last year. Denis explains that “he used a form of wire transfer known in Brazil simply as “DOC”, which is the way most bills (utilities, credit cards, cable….) are paid, but he issued those DOCs to himself or someone else in his family.” Those funds transfers generally come with a fee, ~ 2.5%, so it’s unclear from the story how he managed to keep his costs low enough to make the credit card…
New Airline (‘Reborn’) PEOPLExpress Has a Very Bad Day, and Teaches All Other Airlines an Important Lesson
The ‘new’ PEOPLExpress airlines had a very bad operational day yesterday. They took to their Facebook page, with a message signed by their President: Lots of customers appreciated this heartfelt and detailed explanation, although I’m not sure in his position I would have scolded customer behavior (it won’t be taken well by the customers who behaved that way, and will be read mostly by customers who didn’t — and is about the airline’s needs rather than theirs — although perhaps it paints a sympathetic picture). It seems like they handled things better than United does. Although their non-Facebook communication probably wasn’t as good, based on this Facebook comment: While I am grateful for the explanation, I am still upset about the lack of knowledge from your airport checkin-in counter staff, not being able to get…
