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.
Passengers using fake tests in order to travel is a problem that confounds the re-opening rules several countries have put in place to reduce the amount of virus brought into the country by travel.
95% of passengers on a single flight used an identical test in order to travel, with more than 190 of 200 passengers on the November 25, 2020 Pegas Fly flight EO429 from Moscow to Zhengzhou presenting photoshopped negative results.
Hyatt is cutting elite status requirements in half for 2021. They are giving extra elite nights to people who get their credit card by the end of the year. They are running double elite qualifying nights for the first two months of 2021 (and stays at the end of 2020 will also earn an elite night for 2021). Spending points transferred from Chase or the initial bonus on their credit card on free nights count towards status and they’re even rebating points.
Taken together Hyatt status is going to be very easy to earn in 2021 for the rest of that year and all of 2022. However Hyatt has decoupled some elite benefits from status, and reserves those for people staying a specific number of nights. The nights requirements for ‘Milestone Rewards’ have not been reduced.
After several months of delay, Hawaii opened to tourism October 15th. They allowed arriving passengers to skip the mandatory 14 day quarantine by getting a Covid-19 test from an approved vendor within 72 hours of travel.
That’s about to change, because starting Wednesday it will no longer be possible to test out of quarantine when arriving on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. And that’s not the only change we may see, as local politicians vie for positions ahead of the 2022 Governors’ race where the incumbent faces term liimits.
Two years ago the Boston Globe revealed that the TSA was following ordinary Americans and taking notes on their habits and behaviors for a file, even though they hadn’t been flagged as threats, for a program called “Quiet Skies.” The TSA denied they were doing this. Then they promised to stop.
The program continued anyway, and the DHS Inspector General found that it’s very, very broken.
At the end of the current Japan Airlines schedule first class awards are wide open for two passengers on the New York JFK – Tokyo Haneda route.
Here’s availability for not just two award seats – far more widespread – but for four passengers at 34,000 miles each way per person and without big fuel surcharges.
It’s nice to see how much award space is open on Singapore Airlines non-stops from the U.S. While two business class seats are common throughout 2021, in August and September there’s a wide variety of days on the Los Angeles – Singapore route where four business class saver award seats are available.
Thai Airways has opened a refurbished Royal Orchid business class lounge in Bangkok. It’s an international departures lounge on level 3 of the Suvarnabhumi airport E concourse. It’s a strange time to be making capital investments and opening a lounge when the airline is not generally selling international flights leaving the country.
While Qantas CEO Alan Joyce was the first to voice a plan to permit only passengers who have been vaccinated to fly internationally, U.S. airlines are considering a vaccination requirement as well.
They want to figure out whether this will give customers confidence to travel, and whether requirements can be made uniform across airlines so they don’t have to compete for customers with vaccine policies. A vaccine requirement though will be unnecessary by the time the vaccine is available enough for this to become possible.
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 »
