The Sofitel Hotel in midtown Manhattan is no longer flying a French flag. CNN reports this as protecting the safety and security of staffers at the hotels. Seriously. They fear American street riots or other retaliation for their being French. While Americans may not think highly of the French generally (Tom Palmer once appeared on ABC News referring to the country derisely as an amusement park, Franceland, where there are castles to see and cheese to eat but no innovation), and even less now that they are standing in the way of U.S. action against Iraq, this hardly seems a realistic threat. It may make good business sense, though. Immediately after 9/11, the lcal Chinese restaurant that I order from started sending me chopsticks with pro-U.S. statements on the wrappers. Since these are mass-produced wrappers,…
About Gary Leff
Spend Miles or Money?
Yesterday I was asked whether it was worth spending miles on a domestic roundtrip ticket, or saving them up for vacations later. Here were my thoughts: Don’t bank your miles. Lots of folks see their miles as an account to use for unlimited travel in some far off future. Problem is, airlines control the creation of the currency and its redemption. Airlines regularly inflate the currency, and the raise the number of miles necessary for awards. Except for special award sales (like after September 11th, and possibly to come in the event of a war with Iraq), the number of points required for awards goes up and not down. The best value for miles is international premium class travel. Of course, this all varies by person — some people don’t value business or first class…
Concentrate All Your Flying On One Airline
A colleague asked me whether concentrating all of her flying on a single airline would get her free upgrades to first class. Without going into the particulars of just how much flying (25,000 miles in a year? 50,000 miles? 75,000? 100,000?), here was my oversimplified answer — Different airlines have different upgrade policies. With American you can either use miles OR upgrade certificates that you earn by flying (you basically earn 25% of your flying in first class free). United, Delta, and USAIrways have similar policies. With Continental, Northwest, and America West you get all of your domestic upgrades for free. They process them based on your status and give the seat to you if it’s available. No additional cost. Alaska Airlines is my favorite program of all — elites who fly 35,000 miles or…
Microsoft Outlook Delivers Free Frequent Flyer Miles
The little box to enter your email address on the upper left hand corner of the screen is really quite useful. MilesLink is a newsletter with all sorts of miles and points news. There were even a couple of offers that I didn’t know about in my mailbox this morning: Earn 20,000 Alaska miles by flying Alaska and Northwest (Okay, maybe I knew about this — I may even have posted about this — but I had forgotten!) Earn a free companion ticket to Mexico when you fly 4 roundtrips on America West So sign up… Oh, and of course if you enter your email in the box on the right hand side of your screen, you get this blog — View from the Wing — delivered to your email box each night…
Afghanistan Plants a Flag in Cyberspace
The BBC reports that Afghanistan has “launched its own national internet domain, .af, for websites and e-mail addresses.” But Afghanistan is far from a wired nation because Under the former fundamentalist Taleban authorities, all non-governmental use of e-mail services and websites was punishable by death. Will this formerly fundamentalist Islam nation become the new home of “Size Does Matter” spam?
You Gotta Be in it to Win it
Enter by March 31 for a chance to win 1,000,000 American Airlines miles from Travelocity.
Measuring the Cost of Security
Today’s New York Times carries a piece on a new attempt by John Graham, head of information and regulatory affairs at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, to measure the cost of lost freedom in the war on terrorism and use those costs to help make decisions about whether giving up certain liberties is worthwhile. [T]he budget office asked experts from around the country for ideas on how to measure “indirect costs” like lost time, lost privacy and even lost liberty that might stem from tougher security regulations. The budget office has not challenged any domestic security rules, and officials say they are only beginning to look at how they might measure costs of things like reduced privacy. But officials said they hoped to give federal agencies guidance by the end of the…
United Makes it Hard to Give them Money
Christopher Elliott (whose column on the best airline flights in America I Fisked last month) shares one of my biggest gripes about United Airlines. They demand to see the credit card used for ticketing at check-in. This means that if you’re purchasing a ticket for someone else with your credit card, you need to show that credit card in person. And since there aren’t any “city ticket offices” anymore, you need to show it at the airport. You can get around this requirement by ticketing with a travel agent or getting paper tickets (for a fee, and takes time — the tickets would be shipped to you and then you need to get them to the traveler). But this annoyance pops up if you buy online or directly from United. They say it’s to prevent…
Reader Mailbag — You ask, I answer
Karol from Alarming News.com asks: [W]ith the prospect of war looming as it is, and with the possibility that airfares will go down when the war starts, do you think I should buy my tickets [from New York to Chicago at the end of March] now or wait another week or so? I think you should go ahead and ticket now. Your specific flights are cheap. Depending on the particular flights you’re looking for on those days, I’m seeing a roundtrip fare of $166 on United from LaGuardia or Newark to Chicago non-stop for your days. I also see $175 on American. Will fares drop more? Even in the event of war, it’s unlikely that the fares will drop below what you can get the tickets for now. You’ll want to book your ticket 14…
The Oracle of Google
Some time back I told you about Google Fight, which lets you compare any two items and determine their importance. Coke vs. Pepsi, Heaven vs. Hell, the possibilities are endless. Now you can find out what Google thinks of you with Googlism. Type in your name, the name of a product, or the name of your company and see what happens.
