At Congressional hearings this week, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said that masks provide little incremental benefit in air travel given the safety of the aircraft environment. American Airlines CEO Doug Parker chimed in, “I concur.” And has since been walking that back, though over the summer when virus prevalence was low he and the CEOs of United and Southwest were talking about ending the mask mandate.
So should we still be wearing masks on planes?
The best way to track and manage frequent flyer accounts for many years has been Award Wallet. You add your account information and they let yo know when your balance changes. They let you know when your flight plans change – from flight numbers and times to seats. They track airline fee credits,, free hotel nights, and suite upgrades. And they let you know if miles in a program are close to expiration.
American Airlines has told Award Wallet that they can no longer do this with AAdvantage accounts or American reservations. The position American Airlines is taking is going to make the lives of members and passengers harder, and it’s going to mean less engagement in the AAdvantage program.
Here are three things that I didn’t cover separately from last week’s employee meeting with American Airlines President and CEO-designate Robert Isom, along with several other executives that seemed noteworthy or otherwise interesting to me.
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.
American Airlines partner and oneworld member Finnair is offering up to a 100% bonus on purchased miles, and buying miles also earns elite status miles. Through December 27 you can buy miles for an award ticket and become a mid-tier or top tier elite without flying.
A group of young women flying to Miami tried to bring a bottle of alcohol through the TSA checkpoint. The bottle was flagged because it was more than 100 milliliters of liquid, and not inside a plastic freedom baggie.
In my experience when TSA stops someone with a bottle of water they’ll ask the passenger if they want to drink it or throw it away? These women weren’t going to let a perfectly good buzz go to waste.
Those of you who booked Singapore Airlines Suites from the U.S. to Frankfurt or onward to Singapore will be thrilled to know that Singapore not only plans to operate the Airbus A380 on this route but that starting March 27, 2022 they’ll be operating the A380 with the new cabins which means new Suites.
Unfortunately availability doesn’t look nearly as good as it did 5 days ago. Nonetheless many of you will be excited for the first-time introduction of new cabin to the U.S. This is absolutely one of the best products in the sky. Debates between this and the new Emirates first class and ANA first class are fun (please don’t bring something like Air France first into this debate, their ground experience in Paris notwithstanding).
Hyatt has expanded its partnership with delivery service GoPuff, which offers food, office supplies, toiletries and other convenience store type items.
The reason you care is that most Chase cards are giving you a $10 per month GoPuff statement credit, if you have half a dozen Chase consumer cards you can get $60 a month in GoPuff credit. That, and perhaps also that Selena Gomez is now an investor. And because there’s a Hyatt points signup bonus now, too.
The Senate held a hearing full of mock outrage where Senators got to ask ill-informed questions of airline CEOs, and those CEOs got to give disingenuous answers about nearly $100 billion in taxpayer bailouts received during the pandemic.
There’s some truth in the grandstanding, but legislators should move beyond that and take real steps that would improve air travel in America.
A passenger wearing a pair of women’s red underwear on his face was kicked off of a United flight in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday. And a second passenger removed himself from the flight in protest over the unfairness of it all. Naturally this happened in South Florida, and there’s video.
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 »
