Category Archives for Airlines.
Pakistan has taken a step farther than the rest of the world in the War on Plastic. Airlines flying to Pakstian are no longer allowed to use plastic cutlery inflight.
What’s more, airlines haveo been directed that they cannot transport cutlery in plastic sacks either and must instead wrap them in paper.
Historically awards between the US and New Zealand have been one of the toughest things to book. Years ago Air New Zealand used to open up business class awards 60 days prior to flight. Then they stopped. With a couple of brief exceptions there really hasn’t been meaningful Air New Zealand business class award space in years.
Right now though there is peak business class award space, a little in November and January but quite a lot in December, on Air New Zealand between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston and Auckland.
Mandating more of the space on each aircraft go to each passenger is a bad idea that will drive up prices and make travel less safe.
While United certainly hasn’t promised that won’t ever change, they haven’t made any changes to their thinking. For now this appears to be a false alarm, but without published award charts the program in effect makes no promises as all about the future. Even though this FAQ answer doesn’t suggest the program is being devalued, we can assume that’s the direction it will continue to head.
American tells me that there are no further changes to reciprocal lounge access or what’s left of their codesharing relationship at that time. The change this coming March is that neither airline’s frequent flyer members will be able to redeem their miles for travel on the other carrier any longer.
Offers are targeted and you have to activate them to earn miles from them. They don’t want to give you miles you didn’t realize you’d be entitled to.
My account had 29 offers available to me including Olive Garden; ExxonMobile; American Airlines (bonus miles ona $3000+ purchase); Teleflora and others.
This is some amazing availability. In general it confirms my impressions that West Coast routes are hard (though look at Los Angeles!), and that non-daily routes to secondary cities are tough, but otherwise you’ll find better award space on BA than on most other airlines.
Beginning November 1, both United Airlines and American Airlines will follow Delta and restrict access to their clubs to members who are flying the airline or one of its designated partners the same day.
Delta still lets lifetime club members have the access benefit they purchased. United and American have publicly said they will not, adding the new access restriction even for those members. However American told employees they’re reconsidering.
The good news for American Airlines investors, employees, and customers is that – outside of the potential for United to introduce functional inflight internet – American has more potential to improve than any other U.S. airline. And there are clear steps that would make it better.
American just announced details of their Tokyo Haneda flights at the end of last week. They still have an announcement of new routes with Qantas coming up. But right after losing their LATAM partnership they’ve rushed out an announcement of new service to South America, and packaged it with other disparate scheduling moves – perhaps to make it look more robust.
After all, announcing a move by IAG low cost carrier LEVEL makes little sense when that airline isn’t even a partner.
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 »
