Category Archives for Airlines.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Several weeks ago I wrote that Qatar Airways will sell access to their incredible Al Safwa first class lounge in Doha for just $69. It turns out this is being offered to passengers on awards, too.
I was supposed to fly home from Washington National to Charlotte to Austin yesterday afternoon. It looked to me like I would misconnect in Charlotte, and the later Charlotte – Austin flight was sold out. I started looking for alternatives.
This is a story of making bets, playing the odds, and leaning on the help from one of the best club agents in the system — whose tools to work with customers haven’t been taken away… yet.
American Airlines has seemed to focus more on trying to government to shut down competitors than on improving its own business. They haven’t gotten their operation working well. They’ve been making their domestic product worse – in all cabins.
Unsurprisingly while other airlines make money flying American loses money flying and earns profits only by selling frequent flyer miles.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
The FAA did work for Southwest Airlines during the government shutdown and some other airlines are furious about it.
New variable Air France KLM Flying Blue points pricing is live and often makes no sense. Some awards are more expensive, some less expensive. Instead of a hidden award chart they have a calculator.
But they still offer various routes at 25% or 50% off each month and new ones are up for booking in February and travel in March and April.
A video goes through the history of inflight meals and some of its challenges. And by the way, coffee is miserable on a plane and many wines don’t work either. For at least 9 years I’ve been recommending tomato juice as an onboard drink, with the added benefit that it’s an excellent source of vitamin C and vodka.
Bear in mind that not all airline food is bad…
What is the value of miles and points by airline, hotel and credit card program? Miles used to be thought to be worth 2 cents. I think that conventional wisdom developed out of the idea that a cross country flight cost about $500… or 25,000 miles. 25 years ago that was generally true, and award availability wasn’t really a problem either.
Today the CEO of Delta talks about their miles being worth a penny. When American Airlines awards a mile for travel they book one cent of liability on their books under new accounting rules adopted for 2018. Those rules required the airline to accrue the expected value of transportation to be provided in exchange for their miles.
I love the sentiment, but according to United’s announcement there’s not much to it behind service training for employees, free DirecTV on less than one third of mainline aircraft, and paying out lower bonuses.
Of course anything is better than the recent history at United of dragging and beating a passenger in the aisle, killing a dog in the overhead bin, and shoving a 71 year old man to the ground and threatening to take away his miles for complaining.
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 »
