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.
American Airlines is extending current elite status through January 31, 2022. They’re also making elite status easier to earn this year. They’re extending Admirals Club memberships, and they’re making Million Miler status easier to earn through the end of this year, too.
Many members were getting frustrated not hearing anything about American’s plans to extend their elite status. They earned the benefits through flying last year, and won’t have the full opportunity to use those benefits in 2020, and want to know what their travel with American will be like going forward. American has answered those concerns.
In the years following 9/11, as airlines struggled, and again during the financial crisis airlines pre-sold miles to their credit card partners at a discount in order to raise cash quickly. United and Delta each pre-sold miles, the former for about $500 million and the latter twice totaling about $1 billion. American did it too with Citibank. These ‘cheap miles’ paved the way for banks to offer big bonuses to consumers both for acquisition and for ongoing spend.
These conversations have started again as a way to raise cash.
It will take some time before international travel comes back in more than a limited way. Countries won’t open their borders all at once, and may impose quarantines or restrictions on entry with greater health checks initially when they do. More onerous procedures will mean less travel overall and fewer flights.
Europe is talking about limiting entry through September, including an especially from the United States, while Australia may not even let its citizens leave their country this year.
One reason that the economy won’t return quickly to the way that it was is that people’s preferences are shifting. It’s going to be hard to get people to return to movie theaters, concerns, and sporting arenas – places where large groups congregate, and people are forced close together. Restaurants may have to halve their capacity for some time to move people farther apart. These changes in consumer preferences, which will persist once lockdowns lift, will change what products people want to buy and change how companies need to market to them.
Cleaning is going to be an important selling point to bring back travel.
The Summer From Hell was the United Airlines pilot work slowdown in 2000. It was disruptive enough that my own memories of flight delays and cancellations are still fresh.
But it’s the United’s 1985 pilot strike that still engenders bitterness, thirty five years later.
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.
There’s this idea out there that ‘once this is over’ (whatever this is, the first phase of lockdowns or the immediate virus threat) travel will turn back on like a light switch. I do not expect that to happen.
More travel will start back up domestically. International travel will take a lot longer to recover. Some parts of the world won’t get through the virus as quickly as others. It’ll take longer for some governments to lift restrictions than it will for others.
However lifting of outright bans alone won’t mean it’s as simple to just buy a plane ticket and ago, provided you have a passport, the way it was before for many destinations.
One of the trends that’s really accelerated during the current crisis is the use of online videoconferencing – whether Zoom, Webex, Google, Skype or any number of other solutions. A lot of meetings used to take place in-person that are now happening online. There are predictions of less travel in the future as this change remains sticky even after lockdowns.
However more videoconferencing also means greater location independence. You don’t have to be in the office for meetings. You can do more trips.
These are the broad factors need to be taken into account when estimating the change in value of a mileage currency, and they’re likely to apply differently to each program based on, among other things, the tendency to print miles and the financial stability of the program in uncertain times.
We need to be thinking about how much we value miles – and how much they need to change – recognizing that there are forces pushing the value both up and down at the same time.
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 »
