Category Archives for General.
Qantas today has announced new Melbourne – San Francisco service with a Boeing 787, although we don’t yet have a launch date beyond “late 2018.”
This move surprises me because it front runs any renewed application for a new joint venture with American, and raises the bar for how much service and what new routes would be offered in the absence of such a deal (even if the total number of flights doesn’t grow).
With airberlin going out of business we saw several airlines offering to status match elite members of the topbonus frequent flyer program. Two among them are oneworld members Finnair and Iberia. Iberia is also proactively working to poach Lufthansa elites through this program as well.
LAN and Royal Jordanian offer status match programs anyway but those require flight(s) with those carriers. The Finnair offer was silver with a challenge for Gold. Iberia though offers a straight tier match.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Delta’s relatively strong operational performance has led to a sort of self-delusion. They even lied about not cancelling any flights over the Thanksgiving weekend, their operational performance was very good but they couldn’t resist the temptation to overclaim. They seem to have lost all sense of humility over at Virginia Avenue. And that’s when bad things happen. Especially at an airline.
VietJet’s CEO became Southeast Asia’s first self-made female billionaire last year. And the airline’s CEO sees bikini campaigns and onboard stunts as empowering, even feminist given conservative Vietnamese mores.
When Delta re-upped its co-brand card agreement it set a bar that other airlines have tried to chase with their own bank issuer arrangements. American Express was willing to back the truck up to Virginia Avenue since it was set to lose its Costco cobrand and desperately needed to lock in its next-largest co-brand deal. (Shortly thereafter they re-upped their next largest, Starwood, as well.)
Revenue from American Express has continued to grow as spend on their products has grown. As Delta shared this week at is Investor Day 2017 revenue from American Express will total $3 billion. And they’re projecting out continued straight-line growth.
American lost its India reach when Delta outfoxed American and blocked its Jet Airways relationship. Now Delta is outmaneuvering American again with a WestJet joint venture and now American is losing its reach into Canada too.
A homeless man stumbled onto 300,000 Euros worth $354,786 at current exchange rates in the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport last Friday.
He ‘leaned on a door’ in terminal 2F which generally serves Air France’s partners like KLM and Alitalia. It was left unlocked and it opened.
To celebrate the launch of United’s new Houston – Sydney service they’re looking for 5 people with the first or last name Sydney to shower with gifts and prizes. Do you know someone named Sydney (or Sidney or Cydni or…)?
Over the summer Boeing pulled off some spectacular art with a 787 — drawing a 787 in the sky with the route that it flew.
And other pilots have gotten even more creative.
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 »
