General

Dec 06 2015

Luxury Travel Diary, a high-end travel blog with great reviews based in the UK, has a bunch of travel auctions — some about to close, others extend into October — and there look to be some real bargains.

They wanted to highlight some of these, and offered to help organize a giveaway of a 3 night stay in a 3-bedroom luxury apartment in London for readers of this blog. I suppose that folks who already know about these auctions don’t like this added attention, because frankly there aren’t enough bidders relative to the value of the offerings and some of these items go too cheap.

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Dec 06 2015

A Jordanian man traveling on a US passport on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Belgrade “cried out that he wished to join Allah along with all the passengers.”

Apparently he was demanding access to the cockpit. When that didn’t work he insisted he wanted to open the plane’s outer door. The man was overpowered by flight crew and the Serbian handball team.

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Dec 06 2015

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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Dec 06 2015

The Kuwait Airways pilot who let a porn star play with his controls in the cockpit on a London – New York flight has lost his pilots license.

There’s been an epidemic of pilots getting fired for inviting female stars into the cockpit (or flight attendants). There’s usually at least an incriminating selfie, if not a video.

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Dec 06 2015

Since the TSA doesn’t actually catch prohibited items going through security checkpoints with any regularity, there are worries that pushing people through PreCheck lanes that haven’t been pre-vetted is problematic. (Although these worries require you to believe that regular security is more likely to catch problems.)

So the TSA has scaled back ‘managed inclusion’ so that TSA employees no longer pick people out of line to send them through PreCheck. Instead, only TSA dogs (as interpreted by TSA employees) do so.

With fewer people going through PreCheck lanes, TSA has cut back their hours. But if PreCheck is closed, you’re not out of luck. Here’s what to do.

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Dec 05 2015

Wednesday’s Alaska Airlines Seattle – Santa Rosa flight landed on a deer. And passengers didn’t even know.

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Dec 05 2015

The single strangest policy of any frequent flyer program is being eliminated.

Some programs have expiring miles (for instance, miles earned today will expire in 3 years if unused). Other programs have expiring accounts (accounts will become inactive if there’s no earning or redemption within 18 or 36 months). In either case, activity in your account can extend the life of your miles or in the extreme only some of your miles will expire on a given date.

One airline has had a policy far more draconian than either of those things.

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Dec 05 2015

American Airlines announced on Twitter and on Facebook that they’ve joined Snapchat under the username AmericanAir.

While they’ve long provided customer service via social channels, American spokesperson Barbara DeLollis explains that they’ve “established a channel to learn and connect with our potential audience” rather than providing customer service on snapchat.

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Dec 05 2015

Hyatt Gold Passport has my absolute favorite hotel benefit: Diamond members get to confirm a suite at booking 4 times per year (up to 7 nights at a time). Instead of hoping for an upgrade close to arrival or at the check-in counter, you throw down one of your trump cards and your base-level room reservation confirms into a suite, provided that the hotel has base-level suites for sale.

There was a rumor about Hyatt changing the expiration rules on the upgrades given to Diamonds. The denial they issued elsewhere wasn’t especially convincing. So I got a more definitive statement.

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Dec 04 2015

Back in April British Airways was offering some phenomenal business class fares to Paris.

Fares that are almost as good are back! The new British Airways OpenSkies sale for New York – Paris stacks with the AARP discount and 10% co-brand Visa discount to get the price down to $1347 roundtrip… and even earn a 25,000 bonus mile transatlantic bonus if you travel by January!

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