Category Archives for Commentary.
FedEx pilot crews have been told that – despite the national pilot shortage – they are overstaffed, because air cargo demand is down. Pilots are receiving minimum hours only, for the most part, and they expect that to remain “for the foreseeable future.” This is an industry-wide issue.
As a result, the shipping company is telling its pilots to go work for American Airlines through one of their regional airlines.
Chen Siming, regularly jailed in China for commemorating his country’s 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square, managed to leave his country in July and turned up this weekend in the transit area of Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport seeking refuge from persecution.
Daraius Dubash is currently suing the city of Houston for violating his rights.
It’s possible that there aren’t beings from outer space, that if there are we’ll never find them, that they’ve probed us and are avoiding contact (prime directive?) or even that it’s actually future human societies traveling back in time (or else, why be so interested in earth over everything else that’s out there?).
The Mexican government seems to be suggesting that not only are there aliens, but we have bodies, and we’ve extensively experimented on them. They’ve even shared the footage.
Twenty two years ago today I was sitting in my office in Northern Virginia. I was fortunate not to be on the road, although several work colleagues were and it was a challenge to help them get home when planes were grounded on 9/11. A whole generation of adults was born after that day that remains ingrained in my experience.
The Points Guy has published new “data-driven” valuations for U.S. airline miles and for credit card points, but they don’t… show you much about the data, and the methodology they offer makes very little sense. It’s nonsense built on stilts. They’ve picked out some flights to compare prices in cash and in miles, and then declared the value you’re getting for your miles on those flights is the value of miles. And that’s just wrong. This treats points as being worth the same as cash used towards an airline ticket. But points are not worth as much as cash, because cash can do more than buy airline tickets. You can spend cash on anything you want, not just on what an airline says you can, and you can invest cash to earn a return. You…
A piece in Britain’s The Independent argues that frequent flyer programs shouldn’t exist. It claims that programs designed to encourage loyalty to one airline over another incentivize flying. Flying is bad. And sites like View From The Wing encourage you to take advantage of these programs that are bad for carbon emissions.
Chris Guillebeau is out with his latest book, Gonzo Capitalism. It comes with book blurbs from Daymond John, Gretchen Rubin, and Dan Pink.
He’s written extensively on the new economy, entrepreneurship, and finding personal freedom in an unfree world. He founded the World Domination Summit where thousands of people descended on Portland, bringing their own dreams and schemes and bound together by a desire to live life by their own rules and still live it well. Self-recommending.
Traditional managed business travel has returned to about 75% of what it was prior to the pandemic. And a return to 100% wouldn’t even be a return to trend. Before the pandemic business travel was growing. Yet it’s remained stubbornly stuck, three and a half years after companies sent everyone home.
I started blogging as a hobby 21 years ago. A year later fewer than 1000 people a day were reading it.
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 »
