Category Archives for Airlines.
One of the better tricks to flying comfortably is when there are cheap tickets, just buy two. You often need to work with the airline (don’t just buy an extra seat in your own name, the airline might think it’s a duplicate). But you can usually buy more than one seat and sit in both. That’s more space for a lot less money than paying for business or first class.
Finnair, based in Helsinki, is a member of the oneworld alliance. It is even part of the transatlantic joint venture between American Airlines and British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus. But until recently its frequent flyer program wasn’t very useful.
The airline has linked up with British Airways and other partners to use Avios as its currency, now guarantees award availability for at least two business class seats on its own flights when schedules are first released if you’re redeeming Avios, and has revised its award chart to offer some fantastic values.
This is a first for me in passengers behaving badly at the airport – loading up bags of snacks from an American Airlines Admirals Club to take away. The food isn’t even good!
Right now there’s wide open availability from 11 U.S. cities on Qatar Airways to book mileage awards in their QSuites business class – to Doha and beyond, whether you’re looking at the Middle East, Maldives, or Africa. Use it to get to India or Pakistan, too.
Those who were on the bubble for ConciergeKey renewal got a one-month extension so that their status would last through the end of May, and were told they’d receive a special offer to keep the status. Now they are being contacted with those offers.
The CEO of Frontier Airlines has condemned Jetbridge Jesus flights. Passengers board the aircraft needing wheelchair assistance, but the end of the flight they’ve been healed and can walk off the plane just fine on their own.
This is the phenomenon of passengers requesting wheelchair assistance to get airport priority – skipping lines, and boarding first.
American Airlines has started hiding the ball on basic economy restrictions when you book travel on their website. They’re showing lower prices than what passengers can expect to pay, and find there’s a bait and switch when they click through only to learn that they were seeing basic economy fares and American hadn’t told them when they first displayed schedule and price.
I genuinely don’t understand what American Airlines is thinking here.
The recent FAA Reauthorization Bill contains 5 new roundtrips that DOT can assign ‘beyond the perimeter’ and airlines are jockeying for those. What’s odd, though is that Spirit Airlines is asking for National Airport to San Jose, the new slots are limited to incumbent airlines at the airport, and Spirit doesn’t serve National airport.
American Airlines released a shareholder presentation supporting its positions on votes at the carrier’s annual meeting. Most of the ink is spilled over CEO Robert Isom’s $31.4 million pay package, which consists in part of retro pay at a time that retro pay is the most contentious issue at the end of labor negotiations with flight attendants.
Business class award space is wide open on Star Alliance member Swiss. You’ll find availability from New York JFK, Washington Dulles, Chicago O’Hare and even from Los Angeles and San Francisco, with two passengers easy to find and some dates offering as many as 9 or more seats on the same flights.
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 »
