Category Archives for Airlines.
A Ryanair received second degree burns from buy on board pasta that a crewmember dropped on her during her flight from Marseille to London last week. It “took them 45 minutes to an hour to even open their first aid kit.” She went to the hospital on arrival in London.
Thank you so much for your help! Over the weekend I asked for help raising United miles for Give A Mile, which uses donated miles to help people spend the last days of life with a loved one. I offered a match for donations.
Over the course of that match, the Give A Mile campaign went from having raised 218,000 miles to 600,000 miles on its quest to raise one million miles. That’s incredibly generous. There’s still two weeks left to help them reach their goal.
While United Airlines made elite status easier to earn in 2022 they’re returning to their harder revenue-based spend requirements for 2023, while giving existing elite frequent flyers a small head start towards status, allowing award travel on United to count towards status, and increasing the credit members can earn by spending on United co-brand credit cards.
There’s no brand that’s been tarnished as much in Australia over the past year as Qantas. They don’t have enough seats to meet demand, and their operations have been awful as they’ve returned to international service. Stories are rampant of passengers with cancelled flights, where the airline stranded them abroad telling them they couldn’t return home for weeks.
Yet the Aussie government still protects Qantas from competition, limiting flights and keeping prices high. Citizens there should be outraged at the crazy stunts Qatar Airways has to engage in just to provide more flights in and out of the country.
Marriott has myriad airline partners – at 38 it’s way more than bank transfer programs. We’re now seeing a change to the Marriott points-to-miles transfer bonus. Specifically, the hotel chain informed customers this morning that the bonus would no longer be available on transfers to American AAdvantage, Delta SkyMiles, or Avianca LifeMiles effective October 31. Transferring 60,000 Marriott points will yield only 20,000 AAdvantage miles going forward – not 25,000.
Most people have gotten back to normal. That includes the airlines, judging from the photos all over twitter of dirty planes. Pandemic travel waivers are over, and basic economy fares are back.
Delta Air Lines has added an option for business class passengers to “Skip First Meal Service” as part of their pre-selections for on board service. Customers fying long haul in the ‘Delta One’ cabin might choose Trout, non-meat Meatballs, chicken breast or to skip the meal. That is described as having an environmental benefit, to “help[..] reduce food waste.”
The airline’s business class passengers, booking the least expensive business class ‘Z’ fare roundtrips on a route like Detroit to Seoul, are currently spending over $8000 roundtrip. And the airline is asking them to help save money on catering bills.
I’ve heard from several readers that have had problems changing American Airlines partner awards. They’re told that unless all flights in the itinerary that they want to keep are available with award space at the time they’re making the change, they’re out of luck. They can’t just keep the award flights they have, and change or drop a segment.
I have no idea what the future holds for Twitter. It was a bloated laggard under CEO Parag Agrawal and before. Musk is blowing things up, and that will either go very well or very badly. But it will be more interesting and more focal for awhile in either case. It seems like a mistake to walk away rather than to be a part of it, at least a little bit even if you’re hedging your bets elsewhere int he meantime.
American Airlines pilots negotiated a contract, but the union voted against sending it to its membership for a vote. Now they’re back in the media negotiating in public, saying that the airline’s failure to pay them enough, and improve their schedules enough, is why flights get cancelled. Even though that isn’t true.
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 »
