Southwest’s new 90,000-point Priority Card offer is valuable on its own, but the bigger play is Companion Pass. Between the bonus, required spending, and the 15,000 qualifying-point boost from holding a Southwest card, this offer gets you most of what you need for the best deal in travel.
An American Airlines regional jet from Nashville to Washington National was met by hazmat crews after a so-called service dog made such a mess in the cabin that passengers became sick. Genuine service animals can have accidents, but this is exactly why travelers are fed up with fake service-animal paperwork: a trained working dog is not supposed to turn a cramped regional jet into a biohazard.
Milan may open its close-in Linate airport to long-haul flights for the first time — but only if every seat is business class. The draft carveout would let premium passengers skip faraway Malpensa for all-business narrowbody flights, with New York the obvious first target, while economy passengers remain shut out of the city’s most convenient airport.
Nashville airport’s long-rumored credit card lounge is now a real bidding opportunity: 20,600 square feet, a required $20.6 million buildout, premium food and drinks, private bathrooms, family or gaming space, and a 15-year lease. American Express and Chase have already been in discussions, Capital One has every reason to look, and the winner could make Nashville one of the biggest bank-lounge battlegrounds in the country.
Southwest’s new assigned-seating era is already producing the kind of customer-unfriendly absurdity the old airline used to avoid: a passenger says her assigned seat had garbage and brown liquid on it, but when she moved to an empty row she got yelled at instead. The deeper problem is that Southwest is trying to enforce a paid seat model before it has the premium product, technology, or consistent crew guidance to make it feel anything but hostile.
June 2026 brings a fresh round of best-ever credit card offers, with several new bonuses added and others already gone. Here’s the up-to-date list of the most lucrative deals still available.
Airlines have sold away the single best reason to chase elite status: free first class upgrades. When the seat an elite member hoped to clear into is being offered to anyone for $26, loyalty programs need a new bargain — one built around discounted buy-ups, earned upgrade credits, guaranteed extra-legroom access, giftable benefits, and real help when travel goes sideways.
Retailers are back to arguing that credit card rewards hurt poor cash and debit customers, this time with a new Harvard paper getting attention. But even taking the paper on its own terms, the redistribution claim is much smaller than advertised — and the Durbin-style fee caps retailers want may hurt lower-income consumers more than the rewards system they’re attacking.
Breeze Airways has reportedly told flight attendants they can no longer call crew scheduling directly — they have to text and wait for a callback, with no guaranteed timeframe. That may save scheduler time, but crew communication is exactly where airlines cannot afford friction: missed contacts, legality issues, hotel problems, and uncovered flights are how small operational problems turn into cancellations.
Delta’s plan to fix its most important premium domestic routes just hit another setback: the new flat-bed business class seat it wanted for Airbus A321neos appears to be dead after certification delays. Instead of a differentiated suite that faced passengers toward the window, Delta now seems headed for a more conventional replacement — years later, while its JFK–LAX reliability problems mount and rivals move faster on both seats and Wi-Fi.
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 »
