General

Category Archives for General.

Loyalty Programs Move Slowly, Today’s Devaluations Have Taken 30 Years To Implement

united plane docked
Jan 05 2020

United Airlines MileagePlus no longer has anything to do with miles at all. You no longer earn points based on distance flown. You no longer earn status based on distance flown. Award costs aren’t based on distance either.

With elite status now based on money spent they’ve put an end to “miles” completely. They’ve been trying to do this for over 30 years.

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I Got One Detail Of The Mileage Run Mexican Jail Saga Wrong

Jan 04 2020

A former producer of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette took an end of year mileage run and wound up in a Mexican prison. Many people were calling into questions details of his story but most of it actually checks out.

However Kimmel reached out to me and let me know there was one detail of the story I had gotten wrong though. All this wasn’t even to renew his Executive Platinum (100,000 mile) status. He was mileage running to make Platinum Pro (75,000 mile status).

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One Airline Flight is at the Heart of US Problems With Iran

airplane taking off
Jan 03 2020

In the US we still think of Iran taking hostages after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Of course they overthrew the Shah, whose power had been consolidated with the help of the CIA (after the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh). The US backed Iraq in the 8 year Iran-Iraq war, though in hindsight this didn’t go well, shortly after it ended Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait – which had provided billions for his anti-Iran crusade.

Iran came to the table for peace, helping to end the war in a stalemate, shortly after the US shot down a civilian Iran Air flight in 1988. They may have believed that the US was openly joining Iraq’s fight and would stop at nothing.

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