The Cathay Pacific route map is about to get much smaller as the Hong Kong-based oneworld airline permanently drops 7 destinations, including three to the U.S.
There’s a long history of loyalty programs targeting people while they’re young, hoping to build a lifetime relationship with a customer. And some of those ideas are resurfacing today.
Seeing more efforts along these lines is a sign that loyalty matters again. When planes were full airlines didn’t have to work as hard building relationships with customers or marketing to fill empty seats. That’s all changed, and we’re beginning to see a renaissance of the frequent flyer program. Hopefully that spirit lasts even once we’re back to normal times and traveling again.
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 same rules allowing Delta’s club lounge to serve alcohol despite the Michigan governor’s order closing bars should apply equally to restaurants in the airport for those who don’t have club membership and are willing to pay for a drink.
However it seems a lot easier for people to drink alone, as Michigan’s governor seems to prefer people in her state do, than make a trip out to the airport just for liquor. It would be fascinating to see Delta’s internal data over the next three weeks about whether alcohol consumption continues to track with passenger numbers, or whether it increases on a per-admittance basis in to the club.
RobKAllday posted a video to TikTok showing himself editing a screen shot of his boarding pass to show he was eligible to bring a carry on bag onto his Spirit Airlines flight.
For teaching the internet how to get around Spirit’s carry on bag fees, he’s now banned from the airline.
An Alaska Airlines flight landed on a bear on Saturday in Yakutat, Alaska. The Boeing 737-700 impacted the bear on the left side of the aircraft but continued to land and taxi without incident. They returned to the apron where they discovered a deceased brown bear, a mother whose two year old cub was unharmed.
Singapore Airlines is offering offering a 15% bonus on points transferred into KrisFlyer miles from credit card programs through December 27, 2020. Nearly all of their bank partners are eligible for the bonus, including Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citibank ThankYou Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards and Capital One miles that are trasnferrable to airline miles.
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 AAdvantage still has award charts, although the awards you book may not be based on chart pricing. They’ve increased the price of ‘unpublished any time’ award levels and a one way business class ticket on an American flight to Tokyo may now cost as much as 450,000 miles – but there’s something to look for that could cut the cost of the same redemption by 84%.
We know that business travel is almost non-existent these days, but airlines in the U.S. have consistently reported that it’s more or less tripled off of a very low basis – it was down 95% and now it’s down ‘only’ 85% (so up from 5% of last year’s levels to 15%).
The business travel that has recovered has been small businesses, often in the Midwest and Sun Belt, as well as critical logistics and health care businesses. But how much of an airline’s total revenue did this account for, anyway?
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 »
