News notes from around the interweb:
- Several folks have objected to my advice to file a credit card dispute when your flight is cancelled but the airline won’t give you a refund, saying that if you bought your ticket through a travel agent the airline will bill the agent for the cost. Not so, at least with Delta.
- Marriott has dumped its ‘insiders community’ and replaced it with a Facebook group
- Expiring United Club passes are being extended
- I wrote that the King of Thailand is social distancing in a German hotel, along with his harem. It turns out that he’s keeping busy by flying planes.
The King of #Thailand is an #avgeek + avid pilot. During his current stay in #Bavaria the royal entourage occupies a whole hotel and his majesty does pleasure flights in his private #Boeing737 all around #Germany, practising touch and go despite #COVID19 https://t.co/2E1k981wrt pic.twitter.com/ywNgNxQSJJ
— Andreas Spaeth (@SpaethFlies) April 3, 2020
- Emirates will re-start passenger flights on Monday “from Dubai to London Heathrow, Frankfurt, Paris, Brussels and Zurich, with 4 flights a week to London Heathrow, and 3 flights a week to the other cities.”
- Germany will nationalize Condor
- Virgin Australia suspends points transfers to Singapore Airlines because when you transfer points from one program to another, the program you’re transferring points out of has to spend cash to buy the points they’re giving you.
- It appears that Lufthansa will get a bailout from the German government (NYT)
Gary,
Was hoping you could offer some advice. I had locked in JW Maldives at the old rate for 5 nights at 280k. JW Maldives cancels the Rez because of corona. I FB messaged Bonvoy and they refuse to let me rebook to new dates keeping the old rate. And when I brought up the notion that the entire concept of locking in old rate goes out the window if hotels can just cancel these old rate rezzies this was their response “ Hello Al, Thank you for sharing your feedback we will share this with leadership. Thank you.”
Do you have any advice for me? Thanks.
@Al – your request is MORE THAN reasonable, however you’re probably going to have to wait to press your case until things open back up in part because of all of the furloughs and closed contact centers with Marriott (and their customer service isn’t very good to begin with). Try DMing Marriott on twitter at least creating a record of the request.
Delta eliminated its invite-only focus group, Sky Panel, the other day. It was run by a market research firm contracted by Delta. Recall the airline said it was eliminating was non-essential consultants and contractors.
Normal contraction in the crisis management most companies are going through. I think you will see many things from the past eliminated or pared back, certainly there will be a new way to do business going forward after this is over. Air travel will be a slow recovery as will many industries around the world. The day of “jumping on a plane” to go see a client or someone will be over with to a great extent. In our company and others that I know are seriously looking at how their working today remotely and expenses going forward on travel etc. Should be interesting to look back on this two years from now.
As for individual bookings / cancellations Gary your correct wait and see how the majors will handle this. There will be winners and no doubt losers. Hilton I think is the clear winner so far Marriott the loser so far.
I have my last pre-rules-change Marriott Points Advance reservation for Hawaii in July. Hoping we will be able to go. Anticipating that they will screw me out of it if we can’t.
Property has gone up in category, so there’s not even the option of rebooking and just paying more points. Too many more points needed.
Hoping they do the right thing,
Marriott continues to distance itself from its customers, this time by hiding in a Facebook group. They don’t want feedback ( in part evidenced by the fact that hotels never survey post stay any longer). It’s becoming a very strange company…
Shall I assume the real reason Marriott is dumping Marriott Insiders is because they don’t want the answers searchable by Google/Bing searches?
If there is a less nefarious/slimy reason, please let us know.
I just read (NY Times) that American Airlines will refund a non-refundbable ticket if it cancels a flight and the schedule change is 61 minutes or more. Great news! But, minutes after reading the article today, I receive an email saying my round-trip, non- stop flights PHL to CDG are now 1-stop flights through DFW. Coincidence or simple rerouting? What’s my recourse or options? Thank you