Category Archives for Airlines.
Back in June I wrote about the class action settlement over fuel surcharges imposed by British Airways on U.S. customers between November 9, 2006 and April 17, 2013.
Sadly British Airways stopped calling these member taxes ‘fuel surcharges’ (which legally have to be related to the cost of fuel) and started calling them ‘surcharges’ (money for nothing) and they can keep on penalizing Avios redemptions to their heart’s content.
Supermodel Chrissy Teigen is a total frequent flyer geek.
Last year she even broke news about a flight turning back around to LAX due to a security issue when she and her husband John Legend were enroute to Tokyo. She’s even brunched with Chase Sapphire cardholders.
A little over a year ago American Airlines started offering more coach award space, and they did it in an interesting way. They started opening up award space on a married-segment basis — availability wasn’t for a specific flight but for an entire itinerary.
Agents are now being reprimanded for helping customers to work around these restrictions. And married segments make it very difficult to make changes to an award later, a real blow to Executive Platinums and ConciergeKey members who have free changes as a program benefit.
American Airlines is apparently rolling out new amenity kits — and not with Cole Haan. It appears that this new amenity kit has leaked — put out into service too early. And the early word seems to be they look pretty awesome.
Kenya Airways just launched new Nairobi – New York JFK service a couple of months ago and already they plan to scale back to five times a week at least for winter.
Nonetheless RwandAir is moving forward with service to the U.S. They aren’t quite sure yet whether that will be Newark or New York JFK. They’ll use an Airbus A330neo for the route that offers flat beds in business class and premium economy. But the flights won’t be New York – Kigali.
Even though their caterer has taken ‘the greatest care’ in preparing the dish, this British Airways Club World London – Chicago menu warns “there is a very small risk of bullet fragments that could be found in the meal.”
You now can use miles to pay for seat upgrades after ticket purchase whether extra legroom coach or an actual premium cabin.
The question is whether post-purchase mileage upgrades will replace Delta’s hidden mileage upgrade award chart — whether mileage upgrades will always be simply priced based on fare.
Delta’s operations at New York JFK are split across two separate terminals, terminal 2 and terminal 4. Delta wants all of its operations under one roof. And they want all of SkyTeam under their roof too. In order to accomplish that they need to push out several airlines that currently operate out of terminal 4.
Somehow I wasn’t familiar with the story of Aeroflot flight 6502 from Yekaterinburg to Kuibyshev to Grozny. On October 20, 1986 the pilot of the Tupolev Tu-134A bet his co-pilot that he could land the plane blind. He would draw the curtains on the cockpit windows and make an instrument-only approach.
People don’t think about the little niceties they can do for others when they fly. For instance how often does an airline club member guest someone in need into the lounge? My guess is that when we travel we don’t take the time to get to know what’s going on with fellow passengers.
It can be awkward or stilted to try. I know I’d hate to seem creepy approaching a stranger, even if it’s to do something nice for them.
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 »
