Airlines

Category Archives for Airlines.

Delta Now Charging More Than Half a Roundtrip for Many One-Way International Awards

by Gary Leff

delta plane
May 02 2019

Ever since removing their award charts from public view, Delta has seemed to go out of their way to find more and more ways to stick it to their SkyMiles members like imposing basic economy restrictions on the least expensive awards and eliminating high value upgrade awards.

Now they have a new trick to charge you more miles — and since they don’t tell you how their pricing works you might never even know it and wind up spending more miles than you have to for the same itinerary! Delta now charges more than 50% the roundtrip cost of an award for many international redemptions.

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American Airlines Plans Three Key Inflight Improvements

by Gary Leff

airplane seats
May 01 2019

American Airlines is planning to make three changes that involve listening to customers, revisiting past decisions, and fixing pain points. That’s great news.

The plan is to make changes to their new domestic first class seat to offer greater comfort and more underseat storage. They’re going to improve their international wifi, moving towards the quality improvements they’ve made domestically. And they’re going to install working dividers between center seats in business class to provide passenger privacy.

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American Airlines Now Lets You Volunteer for Bump Compensation Electronically

by Gary Leff

switch flights flyer
May 01 2019

Airlines are going to new great lengths to avoid involuntarily denying boarding to passengers — selling more tickets than there are seats and then not having enough volunteers to take a later flight for compensation when more passengers than expected show up. Some airlines are overbooking less. Others are paying out more compensation to get more passengers to volunteer to give up their seats.

We’ve seen stories about Delta giving a passenger $4000 in travel vouchers for agreeing to take a later flight and United giving out $10,000. American’s Day of Departure Desk will also authorize substantially more compensation than before.

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British Airways is Changing Partner Award Prices May 30 – But Won’t Tell Us How Much They Go Up

by Gary Leff

alaska airlines plane
Apr 29 2019

British Airways has a history of making changes to its award pricing without notice, and also of giving a few months’ notice. When they moved from an award region chart to distance-based pricing in 2011 they told us they were changing pricing but not what prices would be. When that happens you know they won’t be ‘changes you’re going to like’.

Now we’re once again learning of impending changes but not what the details of those changes will be.

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