General

Jun 03 2016

There are three great international first class flight products. There are many airlines which are very good. But the first class offerings in Airbus A380s of Etihad, Emirates, and Singapore Airlines are better than the rest.

And Etihad’s first class Apartment is better, even, than the first classes of Emirates and Singapore.

Photos are one thing. Etihad has produced a 360 degree virtual reality film with Nicole Kidman that takes you through their Airbus A380, including inside The Residence. You can drag the screen to change your viewing angle in this video.

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Jun 03 2016

Credit card signup bonuses have bounced around a lot over the years. Normal when I started was 15,000 miles. Bonuses surged tremendously around 4 and 5 years ago, it wasn’t uncommon to see 100,000 mile bonuses at least for less popular cards or in the form of targeted offers.

For the most part things have settled down, where 50,000 miles is a good offer and sometimes offers fall to 30,000 miles. Miles are more expensive to issuers than they were in the depths of the Great Recession, and they’ve gotten more sophisticated figuring out what it takes to earn back revenue from portfolios of customers to cover acquisition costs.

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Jun 03 2016

Improved inflight internet was one of the five priorities I outlined for the airline now that they completed customer-facing integration of US Airways and American. Another was offering a consistent product.

American is going to go with ViaSat for domestic high speed inflight internet. For some planes. Starting over a year from now. So they will have 3 different internet providers, and fast internet only on a small portion of their domestic fleet.

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Jun 03 2016

Scott Mayerowitz, covering yesterday’s launch of a new United Airlines premium product, shared this interesting tidbit about United CEO Oscar Munoz’s health having returned to the job after a heart transplant shortly following his being appointed to the role.

The CEO of United has been under doctor’s orders not to even fly commercial. We certainly wish him – and United – continued recovery!

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Jun 03 2016

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.

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Jun 02 2016

One Chinese teen reports that he found Emirates A380 cargo “comfortable.” It just goes to show that Emirates A380s are comfortable in all classes of service.

The 16 year old boy from Bazhong City climbed a fence at the Shanghai airport and snuck into the plane’s cargo hold. The flight took off shortly after midnight and made the journey to Dubai where the young Mr. Xu planned to make his fortune.

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Jun 02 2016

Tweeted to me by @IFlyPlaces and confirmed by One Mile at a Time, Swiss First Class is currently bookable using miles in Air Canada’s Aeroplan, which is an instant transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards.

It’s likely bookable through United as well, an instant transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards.

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Jun 02 2016

Oscar Munoz took the stage at Gotham Hall in New York this morning to talk about their new push at United. It as as much about the culture of the airline as it was about the new product — the “culture of caring” and “new spirit of United” that he acknowledges has been “missing far too long.”

So the center of their design is the new Zodiac seat (coming from Zodiac UK, with a dedicated product line that United says is on-time for a seat that’s been certified).

The seat will be fully flat with direct aisle access. That puts it a cut above British Airways and Lufthansa, but plays catch up to Delta and American.

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Jun 02 2016

Julian over at Travel Codex picks a fight with me. He doesn’t just disagree with me over privatizing the TSA. He gets personal: “Though do you remember the Dean in “Old School”? That guy was a total jerk, right? So maybe for the purposes of today’s post we’ll think of Gary as that sort of “Dean” of Boarding Area and then it’ll be okay to argue with him and maybe egg his house or something.”

He throws down with Jeremy Piven, who isn’t just Ari from Entourage. He’s also the creepy guy who kept texting evil travel hacker Justin Ross Lee‘s girlfriend.

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Jun 02 2016

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.

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