Category Archives for Airlines.
American Airlines announced today that they are ending their Chicago – Beijing flight in October, adding new flights to Hawaii and the Caribbean, and swapping out London flying with their joint venture partner British Airways (which has implications for quality of product and upgrades).
British Airways has finally joined PreCheck.
Notably though that’s not a help at New York JFK where terminal 7 doesn’t currently have PreCheck. Hopefully British Airways passengers with PreCheck will be afforded expedited screening.
American Express Membership Rewards is offering a 25% bonus on transfers to Air France KLM Flying Blue through June 15. It may be targeted because it only shows up for me when I log into my account.
Here’s how to play it.
Right now there’s reasonably good business class award availability on American Airlines New York JFK – Barcelona in the fall and winter.
Impressively there are even dates where four award seats are available, so it’s great not just for couples but for families too.
Unionized flight attendants — and flight attendants at airlines whose procedures mirror union work rules — get to work the most desirable trips based on seniority. Senior flight attendants at large international airlines can jet away to Sydney, to Buenos Aires, to Paris while more junior flight attendants overnight in Des Moines.
American Airlines flight attendants have created a secondary market renting out their seniority. They sell prime trip assignments to junior flight attendants, reportedly on average for $200 per trip.
Two weeks ago a Southwest Airlines flight from New York LaGuardia to Dallas Love Field made an emergency landing in Philadelphia after experiencing an uncontained engine failure.
The occurrence aircraft, N772SW, flew today from Philadelphia to Paine Field in Everett, Washington as SWA8700.
Etihad’s CEO says they plan to remain a global player rather than shrinking to become a premium boutique airline, even as he spurs further speculation about a merger or other close cooperation deal with UAE rival Emirates which is based just over an hour away.
Singapore Airlines offers very good award availability to its own members, but not very good availability to partners. I’ve written about excellent first class award space Los Angeles – Tokyo and great business class space Houston – Manchester.
If you want to fly long haul premium cabin awards with Singapore, you need to use Singapore’s own miles. Chase, American Express, and Citi points all transfer to Singapore Airlines Krisflyer.
One of the big mistakes people make booking awards is to assume that when you want to travel you go to your frequent flyer program’s website and enter where you’re flying from, where you’re going to, and you’ll be presented with your options.
If you go to the American Airlines website and say you want to go to Bangkok there will be no availability, ever. And that’s not because there’s no availability, although that’s what most people assume it means.
Thursday night’s American Airlines Raleigh – Washington National flight, AA5580, got out of hand.
Two women sitting next to each other on the Bombardier CRJ-700 regional jet got into each others’ personal space. One woman describing herself as “fat” says her seat opponent was unhappy she was spilling over into the next seat.
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 »
