News and notes from around the interweb:
- Hertz still hasn’t solved the Jerry Seinfeld problem: When taking the reservation doesn’t actually hold the reservation.
- US Airways is rolling out online pre-order o paid meals in coach. You’ll no longer need to game their IT system to be able to have this.
- You can comment on my blog for a chance to win a Samsung Chromebook.
- Taipei-based EVA Airways has joined the Star Alliance and is a truly awesome ‘get’ — business class award availability is really, really good and thy fly to Toronto, Vancouver, New York JFK, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. Another great way to get between North America and Asia and with a really stellar inflight product. I’ve found the Aeroplan website good for searching space, along with the ANA website. I was unsuccessful pulling up available space at United.com yesterday.
- The Canadian government has ruled that Swiss must honor some tickets that they had cancelled from the Myanmar mistake fare.
- BoardingArea.com — which hosts this blog — will be down for scheduled maintenance on Friday, returning on Saturday (hopefully early).
Maybe we need to implement another Jerry Seinfeld idea of the airport jury to make rulings on things like abuse by airlines. 🙂
I have a US award reservation that has me returning BKK-FRA-PHL-BWI in TG F (and then US C). Looks like there’s some availability with some more convenient times to go BKK-TPE-SFO-BWI in TG C, BR C and US C.
Having zero experience with EVA, would you take the downgrade from TG F for a more convenient flight time (and coming back through the US vs. Europe)?
(Talking about the downgrade on the long-haul, don’t really care about the hour-long segment in TG C 🙂 )
I haven’t flown US in years…no, decades…and I have actively stayed away from them for purely irrational reasons. Now that the AA/US merger may be coming up, I’ve been reading up on them, and this meal pre-order service, and their premium meals in Y for international travel, makes me hope that it gets carried over to AA. Yes, I usually get an upgrade so it’s a moot point, but when I don’t it’s nice to have these “enhancements” available.
Thanks for the EVA heads up Gary!
Oh and hey View From The Wingers, I was wondering if someone could advise if I see EVA avails using the ANA tool and want to secure those seats using my UA Miles. Do I have to go through the Milage Plus agents? If the Milage Plus agents don’t see the inventory, is there any other route I can go? Any insight on this would be great.
@Howard – so far you need to ring up United agents, and they haven’t had difficulty grabbing the seats for me [have set up 4 itineraries since yesterday]. Note that EVA Airways was a United partner even before yesterday … they just weren’t in Star Alliance. You can now see their space on the Aeroplan and ANA sites and ring up United to book. And United has waived the phone booking fee in each case.
Fantastic, thanks for the info! I assume that Business Class on ANA = Laurel Class (Royal or Premium) on EVA? I got a little confused when looking at the seating chart online. If anyone can help clear this up it would be very much appreciated.
I thought the Chromebook giveaway closed on Thursday? “All entries (comments) must be received no later than Thursday, June 20 at 5pm Eastern time.”
Never mind, just rechecked the time stamp on the post and realized my Feedly reader was displaying old posts as new ones! Clearly they’re still working out the bugs.