Category Archives for Airlines.
Two weeks ago Congressman Mike McCaul, who is in a tight reelection race, reportedly refused to wear a mask while seated in first class on his United Express flight, Washington Dulles – Austin. Do you think he’s been banned from United Airlines? And as the President’s treatment underscores, does anyone doubt the fifth wealthiest member of Congress would have access to the best treatments if he got sick – treatments that haven’t been approved for anyone else?
Southwest has another offer to make spending on a Southwest credit card get you to a Companion Pass faster, allowing you to bring someone on your travels (whether buying a ticket or redeeming points) for jus the cost of modest taxes.
If you want to redeem miles to fly El Al, the best option is usually using Qantas miles. Qantas is a transfer partner of American Express, Citibank, and Capital One. If you’re flying El Al, it’s usually best to credit flights to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan.
There’s very little use case for using El Al’s own Matmid Club.
Bringing people together in a stressful time inside a metal tube has meant plenty of passengers behaving badly. American Airlines just sent out a note to its employees letting them know what to look for in passengers who may be inebriated (or are high), and what to do when they encounter passengers who shouldn’t be boarding their planes.
American Airlines recently introduced ‘trip credits’ which are electronic and have different rules from the ‘flight credits’ they’re replacing. Both forms of payment you can use towards a new ticket, but the rules are different. And they work differently than a payment voucher – and a gift card.
Fortunately American Airlines has created a comparison chart for their own employees to use. This was published internally for employees on September 26.
DOT has responded to a petition demanding it adopt mask wearing rules for airports and airlines. It declined to do so, because airlines and airports generally already require masks. Indeed airline mask mandates are better than federal mask mandates for two critical reasons.
United will start flying Newark – Johannesburg March 27, 2021. You wouldn’t be taking a holiday there now, but five and a half months is a million years in Covid time and mileage redemptions are especially flexible – a much better idea than paying cash for an international ticket right now.
The route will feature United’s new business class, and there’s excellent award availability right now.
Former American Airlines Chairman and CEO Don Carty was traveling in first class on Thursday. He left the airline 17 years ago, but some flight attendants still hate him. One crewmember took out their anger that he’d fly American the day 8000 flight attendants were losing their jobs.
American Airlines is letting cabin crew know that they’re not permitted to wear Breast Cancer Awareness flair on their uniforms – even accessories that had been approved for uniforms in the past.
With securitizing frequent flyer programs the ‘new thing’ J.P. Morgan sees an opportunity to take smaller pieces of a program – rather than a whole thing – and turn them into tradeable commodities.
Why not take pieces of the loan and trade those, creating a more liquid market? Why not then package these into frequent flyer mutual funds, parts of various instruments backed by several airline programs? And why not make a leveraged bet on these?
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 »
