Category Archives for General.
Politicians are claiming this is going to be a boon for travelers. Florida Democrat Senator Bill Nelson declares “Relief could soon be on the way for weary airline passengers facing smaller and smaller seats.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. These regulations will either do nothing, or they’ll help protect the major US airlines from low cost carrier competition. They won’t help travelers.
In a move that should surprise absolutely no one the Fair Fees Act isn’t a part of FAA reauthorization that will be voted on this week.
The FAA reauthorization bill includes a number of provisions other than ‘Fair Fees’ that are worth noting.
It turns out that aircraft financing isn’t very risky, and Boeing created their own private sector replacement for the Export-Import Bank and made money doing so.
This new lawsuit alleges that Boeing violated contracts with another company that Boeing built out the structure to do this with years earlier – a private sector bet that involved Ex-Im staff.
Ultimately there are too many people who have been eligible to use the lounges, who have wanted to use the lounges, relative to the size of the lounges. There’s only so much they can do to expand capacity in the airports they work in (and larger lounges are going to attract more people who still stay longer, since currently some people – like me – often stay away precisely due to the crowding).
It is simply difficult to offer a quality lounge product which includes a peaceful, quiet experience for the number of people who have access through Platinum American Express cards.
Aeroplan has been unable to book award travel on several Star Alliance airlines since late August. I reached out to them to see what was going on and they assured me that the issue was a technical problem, that they were working on it, and that they wanted to get it fixed quickly.
However Aeroplan seemed confident that wouldn’t be the case here. I wanted to see the proof that this would be fixed quickly, rather than taking them at their word. It turns out that they fixed it quickly (mostly).
Uber ousted their controversial founder as CEO and brought in the head of Expedia, which alone should have told you consumers wouldn’t be better off.
He’s been on a mission of appeasement, apologizing to governments and drivers. Last year they started letting drivers leave feedback on customers. Now your low rating can get you banned from Uber entirely. in some countries
British Airways issued a press release saying that the “personal and financial details” of customers that have used its website and mobile app to book travel have been stolen, but that this does not include travel details (itineraries) or passport information. This all happened late Wednesday night London time, From 22:58 BST August 21 2018 until 21:45 BST September 5 2018 inclusive, the personal and financial details of customers making bookings on ba.com and the airline’s app were compromised. The breach has been resolved and our website is working normally. They say they’re reaching out to customers they believe have been affected, but that anyone worried about it should “contact their banks or credit card providers” and do whatever those companies suggest. In other words they have no suggestions and aren’t funding options at this…
Robert L. Johnson is best known for founding BET, Black Entertainment Television in 1979 and selling it to Viacom for $3 billion in 2000. He serves on boards like Lowe’s, the NBA Board of Governors, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and is a past board member of Hilton Hotels, General Mills, and the United Negro College Fund.
He’s an accomplished man, he’s well traveled, and he owns hotels — his RLJ Lodging Trust owns about 150 of them. So he’s certainly used to checking into hotels. But not this one.
In 2010 a traffic jam in China lasted for two weeks and stretched 60 miles. There were drivers stuck in the jam for five days, with some cars moving no more than a single kilometer per day.
Perhaps the closest we come to that in the U.S. was Wednesday night at Atlanta airport’s north terminal parking garage.
Costa Coffee is a UK coffee shop chain, with over 2100 locations in there and over 1200 internationally about a third of which are in China. They began expanding outside the UK 20 years ago, with their first international location in Dubai which probably explains why I know them mostly from the Mideast.
The company that owns Costa Coffee also owns Premier Inns. I never realized the connection though it makes sense why I’ve always gotten my morning coffee from a Costa when staying at a Premier Inn.
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 »
