Mary Schlangenstein who covers airlines for Bloomberg asked CEO Ed Bastian during Delta’s earnings call about Southwest’s no-notice 6.5% devaluation of Rapid Rewards points yesterday and whether they’d considering doing something similar.
Bastian offered SkyMiles as a contrast to Southwest, “we’re not considering that, and we’re very excited about the value [of the SkyMiles program].” Wait, wut?
Wait times at London Heathrow immigration hit 7 hours on Monday and a passenger collapsed. An airport executive told U.K. parliament that “police were being called to deal with tensions that flare up as people queue for hours at a time.”
Manual U.K. Covid processing – checking of forms and tests and evidence of booked future tests – is taking so much time that it’s potentially increasing the spread of the virus.
This is a rather unusual offer that combines some of pandemic-era innovation with a traditional stay x, get y free promotion.
The American Airlines-Hyatt partnership has a great new targeted offer, and we’ll now very shortly just how many Hyatt members who have linked their American AAdvantage accounts that is: 1000 American Airlines miles per night up to 30,000 bonus miles – stackable with at least three other ways to earn.
If it’s true that we shouldn’t trust loyalty programs, and that ought to become our base case, then the way that information gets out to the public is precisely by shaming loyalty programs when they behave badly. Rather than shrugging our shoulders at no-notice devaluations, it is important to shout it from the rooftops so that members know to build lack of trust into their base case.
An airline needs to know how much an aircraft weighs for takeoff and fuel burn purposes, and estimates work but those estimates need to be reliable.
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 Department of Transportation approved the American Airlines-JetBlue alliance in New York and Boston. Those airlines had to give up takeoff and landing slots in New York, and commit to increase their flying (or lose more slots).
However it’s a new administration and other airlines aren’t happy with the increased competition JetBlue and American will provide. So the Department of Justice is ramping up a probe of the deal, taking another bite at the apple for special interests.
Australia has jettisoned its vaccination goals, fearful of clotting risks of the AstraZeneca shot, and now says they could keep borders closed even after everyone in the country has eventually been vaccinated. Their risk-reward calculus is different than most of the world’s, and having kept Covid-19 largely under control they’re desperately afraid of any misstep no matter the cost.
You’re going to see a lot about a new CDC-released study that suggests blocking middle seats is important protection for air travel during the pandemic. However the coverage is going to be very misleading.
All that the new research tells us is that being a bit farther away from someone infected with the virus is probably better than being right next to them, which we already know.
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 »
