Category Archives for Airlines.
The latest partner addition is Brazil’s Azul, based in São Paulo. The carrier was started by Dave Neeleman, former head of JetBlue. Azul means Blue. Get it? (And like JetBlue they promote live TV.)
Redemption prices follow Air Canada’s partner award chart and are combinable with Star Alliance flights. And there re no fuel surcharges.
American’s new domestic first class seat is literally the same seat that they use in premium economy, except that it lacks a foot bar or foot rest. The seat is, therefore, premium economy-lite. It’s disingenuous in the extreme to call it ‘business class’.
However on some routes, up until now, that’s what they’ve done when flying Boeing 737s to Latin America. For their Iceland flight though they’re changing this practice.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says that private jets are for the “neoliberal elite” so the populist chooses to fly commercial. Today he’s heading to the U.S. for a visit with President Trump. There aren’t currently non-stop flights between Mexico City and Washington DC. So he’s taking Delta, flying coach, and connecting in Atlanta.
Here’s the Mexican President ensconced in an exit row aisle seat on board Delta flight DL366 from Mexico City.
A 41 year veteran of Qantas lost his engineering job after two women complained about him watching porn on his company-issued iPad. His excuse? He must have momentarily dozed off and the porn just came on without his realizing it.
In other words, the man’s defense – that he brought to the country’s Fair Work Commission to dispute his firing – was that he was sleeping on the job.
The best treatment at American Airlines goes to their top secret ConciergeKey level. They do not release much information about it publicly, but I’ve shared full details before. ConciergeKey is the ‘super secret’ level that George Clooney had in Up in the Air.
With some of American’s best ground services suspended during the coronavirus pandemic, they’ve also introduced two new opportunities: more confirmed international upgrades and access to the British Airways Concorde Room at London Heathrow airport.
Now that the Small Business Administration has released detail on the businesses receiving $150,000 or more in “PPP” loans, I was curious to see if there was any ‘double dipping’ by airlines, taking advantage of their own dedicated payroll support and also PPP funds which were meant to allow small businesses to continue to pay their employees.
It turns out there were at least 10.
Late last year American Airlines started locking AAdvantage accounts and cancelling pending award travel for people they believe took advantage of a ‘loophole’ to sign up for multiple Citibank credit cards.
Several customers whose accounts were shut down filed complaints with the Department of Transportation. American has now responded to a formal complaint, and reveals a lot about what they know – and how they know it.
After a medical diversion a family was given the private jet treatment by Spirit Airlines.
The airline dropped the family off in Turks & Caicos. The girl recovered. But they were stranded – the local airport was closed to commercial traffic, and the they hadn’t even intended to leave the country so weren’t carrying passports. So the very next day Spirit actually sent a plane to bring the family back to Puerto Rico.
Australian Jessican Tam reports that when she cancelled a Qatar Airways roundtrip business class ticket from Jakarta to London, and they accidentally refunded AU$28,179,789.36 – or about $19.7 million at today’s exchange rates. She’s even shared a screen shot of her bank balance.
Southwest is offering a 30% bonus on points that post to your account between August 1, 2020 and October 31, 2020 under the ‘credit card’ category. You’ll earn this bonus if you have at least 6000 credit card points post during the promotion period, and you can earn up to 25,000 bonus points. These points count towards a Companion Pass, which itself has reduced requirements to earn this year already.
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 »
