Category Archives for Airlines.
I still see Flying Blue as the most useful SkyTeam program, with better award availability on Air France and KLM for their own members than is offered to partners and mostly reasonable pricing when saver inventory is available. The addition of free stopovers on one way awards is great, and modest pricing and region adjustments are things most will be able to live with.
British Airways has introduced a ‘Reward Flight Saver’ option for long haul premium cabin travel that – as long as you’ve earned at least 1 Avios in the last 12 months – lets you pay more miles for substantially reduced surcharges.
Southwest Airlines is offering a 25% discount on tickets booked by December 7 for travel December 24-25 and December 31, 2022 and January 1, 2023. These are the Saturdays and Sundays of holiday weekend, and generally less-traveled days since many people will be taking off on Friday and Monday. Use promotion code HOLIDAY25 to get the discount. You’ll see a ‘strike-through’ of the original fare on eligible flights. Not all flights will have discountable inventory. Two key points: Since Southwest awards can be cancelled with points redeposited with no fee, you can make speculative redemption bookings to take advantage of this offer. If you have existing tickets you want to reprice, check the new price and then cancel/rebook. Seeing Southwest make a move to try to fill seats this late in the game suggests that…
There’s a debate, mostly in Europe, over whether to ban frequent flyer programs for the environment because: flying contributes to carbon emissions, frequent flyer programs encourage flying, and it’s inequitable that some people get to fly and destroy the environment while others don’t.
You’d think an operation called Alaska Airlines would be able to handle cooler temperatures but they’re misdirecting so many bags they’re unwilling to honor their on-time bag delivery guarantee.
The CEO of Bahrain-based Gulf Air says the carrier will launch direct flights to the U.S. within 3 years. We can expect that new Gulf Air service to the U.S. to be on Boeing 787-9 aircraft.
The airline’s CEO describes himself as being on a mission to deliver a quality product as a path towards profits because his smaller airline can’t compete on network scale and it cannot compete on price either.
American Airlines was showing that basic economy fares didn’t include a carry on bag to some customers checking in, though they hadn’t updated their website or made any announcement to this effect.
The federal government has ‘no fly’ and ‘enhanced screening’ lists, where they check the names of passengers and decide under what conditions someone is allowed to travel, if at all. It’s a form of pre-crime profiling where people have been added to the list by mistake, for revenge, or for any number of reasons that you aren’t allowed to know. The government claims it’s exempt from judicial review.
This process is meaningless, though, if people can change the name they fly under. So in 2005 Congress passed requirements for IDs that are harder to fake. Since then, however, rules requiring people to actually have a ‘REAL ID’ have been kicked down the road.
Artificial intelligence has seen real breakthroughs. I don’t think we fully grasp yet just how far the science has come. But millions of people are getting their first self-aware glimpse via the free AI Chatbot. To be sure, much of our interactions with our phone and Google involve AI. And Tesla and Amazon have some pretty impressive projects. But does it really hit home until you have the ability to auto-generate a rap battle between airlines in under a second?
Armed federal officers publicly threatening to defy orders from the President seems like it’s getting insufficient attention.
The Biden administration largely continuing Trump’s border policies (he’s building the wall!) seems under-covered as well.
The claim about vulnerable flights as a result is absurd.
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 »
