Category Archives for Airlines.
I recently wrote about my reasons for not transferring points speculative into Air France KLM’s Flying Blue program – even when there’s a great bonus to do so – I explained that it’s because of their expiration policy.
What I failed to point out is that the official policy isn’t always enforced, in fact I was able to extend my miles by two years without taking a flight or putting a charge on their credit card.
American Airlines has a new unpublished award chart level for flights between the U.S. and China, now charging as much as 490,000 miles one-way for a redemption. This includes American Airlines flights to Hong Kong as well.
American and United are still trying to press elites into service for 2021 revenue, but there’s only so much that can be done because business travel isn’t back and the Delta variant of Covid-19 is slowing down its return. Large companies and corporate travel buyers are going to be more conservative about pushing employees back into the office and ultimately onto the road.
Looking at Saturday data from American Airlines shows just how skewed towards leisure travel the skies are right now. The number of elite frequent flyers traveling is paltry especially at the very top level.
Here’s a rather odd sight from an American Airlines flight out of Georgetown, Guyana: a catering cart filled to the brim with Pizza Hut pizza. That’s not the usual meal service from American.
A group of 50 passengers took KLM from Kyiv, Ukraine to Amsterdam where they were supposed to connected to a Delta flight to New York JFK.
Eighteen of the passengers didn’t make it out of Amsterdam, however, because the girls started eating their own Kosher food against instructions from the crew.
United Airlines announced today that all employees would have to get vaccinated starting in late October.
Now Frontier Airlines announced that all of its employees must be fully vaccinated by October 1. Only not all Frontier employees will actually need to be vaccinated.
United has two new ways to earn elite status for next year. One lets existing elites keep their status for modest spending, while the other gives those who don’t currently have status or have already re-qualified a boost in reaching a higher elite tier.
It’s not quite ‘giving up’ on 2021, but it does make earning status much easier, and still requires more spending than other airlines.
Delta is running a sale on coach award tickets to Europe starting at 34,000 miles roundtrip. They haven’t announced the sale, which isn’t surprising since at Delta whatever price they quote you in the moment is the price. Sometimes coach saver awards to Europe are 70,000 miles roundtrip, though I often see them for over 50% above that. SkyMiles is usually a dumpster fire for redeeming points.
We don’t know how long this sale will last, so if you want cheap coach awards to Europe book this now. It’s fully refundable without cost.
American Airlines CEO Doug Parker gave an interview to the New York Times, and much of it covered familiar ground for readers. Five things stuck out to me, though – including that Parker loves viral videos where passengers are being removed from planes, and everyone on board cheers.
United Airlines will require all of its employees to be vaccinated. This requirement will be effective the sooner of 5 weeks after FDA full approval of a Covid-19 vaccine, or 5 weeks after September 20.
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 »
