Category Archives for General.
On Friday’s Singapore Airlines flight SQ516 from Singapore to Kolkata, India was delayed four hours due to non-working air conditioning onboard. But apparently crew didn’t keep passengers informed about what was wrong or what it looked like to fix the aircraft.
There weren’t any refreshments served during the delay that stretched as long as the block time for this four-times weekly Airbus A330. Allegedly sick passengers were refused water.
I admit I didn’t even know that 7-11 had a rewards program, which is good because if I did I might have been invested in the program and now I’d be really disappointed.
The Office of Special Counsel today wrote to the President and Congress to reveal that “safety inspectors at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have improperly approved aircraft for commercial operations without first reviewing critical safety information that in some cases would have prohibited their operation.”
That sounds pretty scary and this is going to get some coverage but it turns out that most of the issues didn’t actually involve safety issues. They included things like expired registrations. And the majority dealt with small charter aircraft.
American Airlines is reportedly looking at seasonal Philadelphia – Dubrovnik service.
Authorities in Dubvrovnik have been looking for twice weekly year-round service from New York. There’s a large Croatian population in New York, and an even bigger one in Pittsburgh.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai arrived in Saudi Arabia with plans to discuss an aid package for Jordan. He made a roughly 1000 mile journey.
And like the King of Saudi Arabia, he used an escalator for getting on and off the aircraft.
One of the most brilliant marketing plays I’ve seen in a long time was Sprint building an ad campaign around bringing on the actor from Verizon’s ‘Can You Hear Me Now?’ commercials?
Sprint is offering what looks like an amazing deal. New customers who port their number over from another carrier get unlimited data, talk and text for $15 per line per month. This even includes international roaming.
American highlights a $3 billion investment in products and services. However poor service from the airline’s front line can undermine all the rest of the investment.
A great example of this comes from June 4th’s American Airlines flight AA192 from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. A business class passenger reportedly voluntarily offloaded himself because his experience with a flight attendant onboard prior to departure was so bad.
There’s a simple solution to browse the web privately, to access internet sites through China’s Great Firewall, and it’s cheaper than using a paid VPN (because it’s free) and faster than using a free VPN.
It’s a web browser that builds in the functionality of a VPN. That way you can privately access content from anywhere in the world. You’re accessing their servers and their servers are calling the sites you want and delivering them to you.
I was asked to participate in a panel for travel PR professionals later this week, along with a traditional newspaper and magazine editor, talking about best practices in pitching stories. How do you get attention and coverage? What do PR professionals do wrong, from our perspective?
And something set me off Monday morning with one pitch, so I thought I’d share it. The worst thing a brand can do is lie. But disingenuous framing can be almost as damaging.
I know all the jokes about Gogo internet (‘NoGo’). But I find it indispensable. It’s internet on an airplane moving at speeds in excess of 500 miles an hour. And the latest technology is much faster than the older installs, though they’ve had their challenges even with new satellite internet to be sure.
I’ve got a unique problem and no one at Gogo has any useful suggestions for me. I’m out of ideas. So I’m hoping you might have some.
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 »
