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.
I don’t love Chicago O’Hare, but when I book an O’Hare connection I usually think, “at least I can get Tortas Frontera.” And I’ll pick up a sandwich (choriqueso is my go-to, followed by the pepito) even though there’s free lounge food available. I’ll gladly pay for something good enough that I would eat it even if it wasn’t inside of an airport.
There need to be some licensed TGI Fridays and plenty of quick serve places in an airport, to put out a lot of food to travelers with varying palates. But not every place needs to do that.
After a three day mission trip to the Netherlands there was one last bit of preaching to do before heading home – inside the airport.
A week and a half ago IHG was pricing many of its best hotels around the world for about half the usual points. This didn’t last. I told everyone to book quickly, and many did.
Some people were worried that IHG would cancel the reservations, claiming they were a mistake, but this did not happen. IHG has been silent on what happened. However this strange pricing is back.
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 U.S. News Travel Rewards program rankings are out and they are a big ‘ol mess, largely because the methodology they use to rank programs makes little sense – which they’ve known for years and haven’t done anything meaningful to improve.
This year is worse than ever because they say they didn’t even bother searching award availability to determine which airline programs are best, blaming the pandemic. And hotel rankings even appear to punish hotel chains offering strong coverage in smaller markets.
Last summer United Airlines placed an order with Boom Aerospace for supersonic jets. Now American Airlines has placed an order, too. American claims they’ll have the biggest fleet of supersonic jets since their order is for 5 more planes than United’s.
American made a non-refundable deposit on the first 20. It’s unclear what non-refundable means: probably non-refundable in the case Boom Aerospace winds up in bankruptcy, but non-refundable if there’s never an engine for the plane?
With summer ending, kids going back to school, and corporate travel not yet fully returned Hyatt is out with a new offer. It’s not as generous systemwide as what we’ve seen in the past, but it’s something, and it includes a kicker to push awareness and program engagement with their new broad portfolio of all-inclusive properties.
American Airlines will be adding a row of seats to their Bombardier CRJ-900 regional jets operated by wholly-owned carrier PSA Airlines. These aircraft will go from a current 76 seats to 80 seats, but one of those seats will be blocked off in order to comply with the airline’s pilot contract.
An Airbus A321 from Madrid to Beirut operated by SkyTeam member Middle East Airlines was intercepted by Greek F-16 fighter jets after the pilot of August 10th’s flight 242, son of the airline’s Chairman and Director General, became non-responsive to air traffic control after signaling a distress code. Nothing was wrong, and the flight’s captain may have simply failed to communicate on the correct frequency.
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 »
