Category Archives for Airlines.
Qatar has prioritized their loyalty program over the past three years, making improvements like awarding miles even before you fly, at a time when Emirates has largely been lighting its program on fire and Etihad has undergone a series of more modest devaluations. This change makes Privilege Club more than just a program for redeeming QSuites.
If your status is ending, consider booking as much future travel as you can, because some of your benefits will likely apply to trips booked before your status expires for trips that occur after.
You can book extra legroom coach seats with your status, where that benefit applies, and those seat assignments will usually stick. And here’s an interesting wrinkle with checked baggage, too.
American Airlines is slowly rolling out multi-factor authentication for AAdvantage account login. This started with a small number of customers on June 13, and more customers are being added to this requirement weekly.
American will not tell you in advance that this change affects you.
Southwest will start selling overnight connection flights for the first time on June 26. They won’t offer redeye flights, but will use their current schedule to sell itineraries that involve an overnight at six airports – Baltimore; Denver; Las Vegas; Phoenix; Chicago Midway; and Oakland.
No new flights are being added to the schedule, this just adds flight options to sell… that customers should be on the lookout for, because they’re options that many will potentially want to avoid.
Right now anyone with a travel credit card can get Frontier Airlines elite status. And that’s a real offer. I’ve seen plenty of people use photoshop over the years when asking for an airline to ‘match’ the status they already have in order to move their business.
It’s normally advisable to check in online when you’re flying an ultra low cost carrier. There are often fees for airport check-in, and lines at the airport can be extremely long because ground staff costs are one area for cost savings – passengers don’t pay much for their ticket, but they’ll pay with their time.
Steve didn’t do this, so when he arrived at the Kuala Lumpur he went to use a check-in kiosk. Not checking in in advance, he hadn’t been automatically assigned a seat. This turned out both to be an inconvenience and a benefit.
Even though marijuana is legal in many states, it remains against federal law. You can’t take it on interstate flights. Still, some people apparently pack their pot in checked luggage. And United Airlines baggage handlers steal it.
An already-boarded Delta Air Lines flight from Edinburgh, Scotland to New York JFK was cancelled on Friday when the 61 year old captain was arrested on charges stemming from intoxication either with alcohol or drugs.
The Biden administration’s Department of Transportation has spent a lot of time jawboning airlines into committing to put passengers up in hotels when faced with overnight delays that are the airline’s fault, such as mechanical issues or lack of crew.
However there’s no minimum standard for what ‘counts’ as a hotel that the airline must provide, as this Delta Air Lines passenger shows after their flight was cancelled and they were put up in a Motel 6 with dirty bath towels and a peeling ceiling.
The American Airlines flight attendants union is in contract negotiations and is proposing to make schedules and quality of life worse for all crewmembers hired after the contract is signed.
If adopted, the union’s proposal would require new employees to sit on ‘standby’ to pick up trips for three years, effectively making them work in service of better schedules for all existing flight attendants.
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 »
