Yesterday American Airlines decommissioned their old award calendar. The airline confirmed to me that it was supposed to be gone for good.
However there’s still a way to access this tool that lets you display award availability across a month by award type, something the new calendar does not offer.
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.
A year and a half ago American Airlines launched a new award search tool clearly geared towards dynamic pricing of redemptions.
While many readers preferred the old award calendar, which lets you show availability by award type (special, saver, standard) and not just the single lowest price on a given day for each cabin, it was clear that the airline was investing only in the new tool moving forward.
Clubs remain closed not just for social distancing reasons, but to control costs. They’re only going to make clubs available when there’s a revenue proposition to do so. And international travel demand, and especially international premium cabin demand (which relies heavily on business travel), is expected to come back last.
In order to lay off pilots, United’s union contract requires them to remove seats from regional jets. They’re preparing the engineering work now in order to have seats out of planes by October 1.
While they expect to be a smaller airline, and for leisure travel to come back before business travel, they see opportunity to encourage existing co-brand credit card customers to spend more on their cards and are preparing new promotions to encourage that.
Airline CFO Derek Kerr offered that the appraised value of the program is between $18 and $30 billion. And he confirmed that the program is expected to be used as collateral for a federally subsidized CARES Act loan. The “deal is not done yet with the government, [but we] fully expect it to be [by the] end of the second quarter.”
At the end of April Hertz was looking at a large payment on $17 billion in debt. Their loans are backed by their fleet of vehicles, but the plummeting value of used cars meant Hertz had to make up the difference in cash. Lenders didn’t want to force them into bankruptcy, though, believing debt would have a better shot getting paid if the rental company continued as a going concern.
Hertz has a deadline of May 22 to develop a financing plan – but the lack of financing is an own goal, since their CEO walked away from up to half a billion in cash back in March.
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.
Chit chat while being towed doesn’t actually violate the U.S. sterile cockpit rule that only activities necessary for safe operation of the aircraft can be carried out when below 10,000 feet (technically, during critical phases of flight). However they’re being recorded.
What’s unusual is standing in the cockpit for takeoff. U.S. rules are clear that pilots must be belted in at the controls, and everyone else has to be belted in for takeoff and landing. There is no standing in the cockpit.
With air travel down over 90% since the start of the pandemic you might expect that flying is a primary mechanism for transmitting the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It’s not.
Two months ago I wrote that it’s safer to travel than you think. I wasn’t telling you to travel, and older people with pre-existing conditions I think probably shouldn’t. However actual risk of travel differs greatly from the perceived risk. That’s been borne out by research, and now endorsed by research experts as well.
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 »
