Category Archives for Airlines.
Southwest Airlines is eliminating expiration of points, raising the requirements for the Companion Pass, and announcing that starting in 2021 they’ll collect any changes in TSA fees and airport facilities charges when elites use free standby.
United admitted during their earnings call that dynamic award redemption is about their own financial bottom line – not customer benefit – and that it doesn’t actually help customers book more awards.
WOW Air CEO Skúli Mogensen pledged his home as $3 million of the collateral he used to obtain funds for fresh equity in the airline last year. Wow Air ceased operations in March, though a West Virginia heiress-turned-arms dealer bought the brand out of bankruptcy and has announced an unlikely scheme to fly again.
Now the home at Seltjarnarnes point, near Reykjavík, is for sale. The home is 6780 square feet over 3 stories and is listed at $2 million, so creditors are expected to take a significant loss.
Kevin Smith made headlines in 2010 over Southwest Airlines’ customer of size policy, vowing never to fly the airline again. He flew them again in 2011 and had another altercation over the policy. He boycotted the airline until 2016.
It turns out his confrontation with Southwest led to the making of the brand new Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.
A group of 79 from the Ocean City High School boys’ and girls’ cross-country teams were flying from Philadelphia to Orlando on Thursday to compete in Saturday’s Disney Cross Country Classic at the ESPN Wide World of Sports. Their Frontier flight was cancelled, and Frontier said they wouldn’t be re-accommodated for six days (four days after the race was over). And no airline had enough seats for such a large group.
They thought the trip was off, but they tweeted at Delta — and two Delta agents met them as they were about to leave the airport: Delta would offer them a plane from Phiadelphia to Orlando.
Delta immediately turned the tables on US-Latin America flying by announcing plans to take a 20% stake in LATAM, South America’s largest airline. Delta is pulling them out of oneworld and out of a pending joint venture with American Airlines.
One side benefit that must have been sweet for Delta, though has gone largely unremarked upon, is the extra benefit that comes from sticking it to Qatar Airways. Now Qatar is trolling Delta back.
Other airlines will be picking up the slack bringing package holiday goers to Spanish resorts. Customers out money in the short-term likely won’t be rebooking until next season, however. Spain’s response is a complex web of arcane regulation and subsidy.
Moving maps, thousands of movies and TV shows, and systems that let you create playlists and favorites and even keep your favorites from flight to flight using your frequent flyer number, inflight entertainment has come a long way.
As KLM celebrates 100 years they’ve made a ton of material available from their archives. The very first inflight video screens is something I had never seen before.
The best deal in travel has to be the Southwest Airlines Companion Pass.
There’s no question that a rewards card with big initial bonus offer is the easiest and fastest way to earn a Companion Pass (in addition to being really big on its own towards reward travel). However there are other fast ways to earn a Companion Pass even without a Southwest Airlines co-brand credit card. And it’s even more enticing with a new 2000 point bonus offer.
The drive to ban reward travel confuses the average and marginal effect of flying on the environment. Saver award travel has, by definition, the lowest environmental impact of any flying. Airlines make saver inventory available when they’re flying anyway and they believe a seat won’t sell.
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 »
