Category Archives for Airlines.
An Alaska Airlines flight landed on a bear on Saturday in Yakutat, Alaska. The Boeing 737-700 impacted the bear on the left side of the aircraft but continued to land and taxi without incident. They returned to the apron where they discovered a deceased brown bear, a mother whose two year old cub was unharmed.
Singapore Airlines is offering offering a 15% bonus on points transferred into KrisFlyer miles from credit card programs through December 27, 2020. Nearly all of their bank partners are eligible for the bonus, including Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citibank ThankYou Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards and Capital One miles that are trasnferrable to airline miles.
American AAdvantage still has award charts, although the awards you book may not be based on chart pricing. They’ve increased the price of ‘unpublished any time’ award levels and a one way business class ticket on an American flight to Tokyo may now cost as much as 450,000 miles – but there’s something to look for that could cut the cost of the same redemption by 84%.
We know that business travel is almost non-existent these days, but airlines in the U.S. have consistently reported that it’s more or less tripled off of a very low basis – it was down 95% and now it’s down ‘only’ 85% (so up from 5% of last year’s levels to 15%).
The business travel that has recovered has been small businesses, often in the Midwest and Sun Belt, as well as critical logistics and health care businesses. But how much of an airline’s total revenue did this account for, anyway?
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigated an earlier complaint, was unable to resolve it, but found sufficient merit to issue a “Right to Sue” letter so the federal government has found some merit in the arguments thus far. Winning this case would represent an existential threat to airline unions. It seems a long shot, however.
It turns out what while aviation’s contribution to global emissions has been growing as worldwide air travel has grown (pre-pandemic), it hasn’t increased in relative importance. Between 2000 and 2018 aviation has steadily accounted for about 3.5% of climate-affecting emissions, and that includes commercial and cargo flights, according to a new study from climate scientist David Lee and Manchester Metropolitan University.
What’s especially interesting though is just how aviation appears to affect climate. It’s contrails that matter most – water vapor and exhaust forming ice crystals.
A British Airways flight attendant is now a registered sex offender after peering over a London Heathrow airport restroom stall with his phone in order to “watch a man urinate.”
In the mid-1990s nearly one quarter of Aeroflot employees were working for Russian intelligence services and the country’s spy agencies diverted ticket revenue for their clandestine projects, creating a dedicated source of revenue outside of the government’s appropriations or oversight.
Now it’s Russia complaining that its Aeroflot executive in London was spying.
With a vaccine for Covid-19 seeming like a real possibility next year, but taking time to roll out broadly across the population, companies whose activities bring large groups together are working to figure out how to do that faster. One way is through technology to ensure that everyone congregating indoors is likely to be free of the virus.
Following American AAdvantage announcing reduced qualification levels for elite status earned in 2021 last month, United MileagePlus is out with its 2021 elite qualification rules and they’re layering on four different boosts towards status along with making it easier to earn confirmed upgrades for those continuing to fly beyond the 1K level.
Taken together lower status requirements, a hard start for current elites towards status, along with bonus qualifying spend for status in the first quarter, and a relaxed restriction on using credit card-earned elite qualifying spend towards top status United has laid out ways that status will be easier to earn than ever this year.
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 »
