Category Archives for Commentary.
This your chance to have your say on which frequent flyer programs are best.
There are awards where a panel of experts gets together to give out an award based on their own opinion. There are awards where companies pay sponsorship fees and keep winning their sponsored award. And then there’s the oldest and largest consumer-driven awards in airline, hotel and credit card loyalty: the Freddie Awards.
The State of California is putting loyalty programs on notice that provisions of the California Consumer Privacy Act dealing with ‘financial incentives’ apply to them, and they’re being given 30 days to come into compliance with the law.
British writer Raheem Kassam is the kind of conservative who hates business and free markets, preferring to ‘own the libs’ and take control of government to enforce the values he prefers. He’s hosted a podcast with Steve Bannon, ran Breitbart News London and when he ran for leader of pro-Brexit UK party UKIP he supported lifting their ban on white nationalist parties. He’s also anti-vaccine.
And now he’s going after United Airlines for offering more comfortable seats. Has 2021 finally lost it?
I continue to travel, and I continue to make travel plans. But I’m doing the best I can to use miles whenever possible, and book cancellable itineraries. The next couple of months couple be touch and go. I’m not making a prediction of what happens, but I live my life on probabilities and make the best decisions I can given the knowledge I have at the moment. And right now I’m giving myself as much optionality as possible.
What I’m really saying is that many people seemed to have calmed after the initial scare over Thanksgiving about the Omicron variant, and I don’t think we’re really internalizing what the next couple of months could (not will) look like.
There’s good reason to think that Omicron spreads more rapidly than previous versions of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. That would be both because of inherent transmissibility and because of greater likelihood of breakthrough infections for those that have had Covid-19 before as well as those fully vaccinated (and even boosted) against it, though boosters do appear to provide greater protection than mere vaccination.
With Omicron appearing headed towards dominance in parts of Europe, outcompeting Delta, and with cases rising rapidly we are facing a conundrum.
The World Health Organization recommends those over 60 or with comorbidities postpone travel due to the Omicron variant of the virus. Many people are reconsidering travel, though United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby says he expects bookings won’t fall as much as they did from the Delta variant.
It goes almost without saying that the advice is different for someone who is immunocompromised and may be less protected by vaccines and less able to mount an immune response to the virus. However for most of us the right answer isn’t postponing travel, it’s boosters.
While we’ve seen virus variants, we haven’t seen rapid mutation that escapes immunity and also involves greater fitness – so that the virus spreads faster and in vaccinated and previously infected populations.
This variant has multiple spike protein mutations that could help it become more transmissible and also evade immunity. Whether this variant becomes dominant or not, it’s suggestive that there are more mutations in the virus that are possible – countering prevailing wisdom that significant mutation wouldn’t be possible while continuing to infect humans.
Telling vaccinated and boosted people under 50 not to go to Europe is wasting credibility. We have failure of elites in this country, and that’s a shame, because we wind up with people who see themselves as sticking it to those elites when it really matters, on issues like vaccines.
Annual trend recap pieces usually wait until the end of the year but am I tempting fate too much to call it largely a wrap on 2021?
With travel frequently doubling last year’s levels each day, and approaching parity with 2019 around the leisure-heavy holiday period, we’re back in the skies and putting our heads down on hotel beds. With far more hassle like vaccine paperwork and testing, international travel is returning though much of Asia Pacific remains tough. And travel companies – and their bank partners – are hungry for your business.
The Biden administration is getting behind a national no fly list though – at least to start – only for violent passengers. Remember that David Dao was accused by many of being violent when he was removed from a United Express plane. His face bloodied an officer’s hand.
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 »
