As hard hit as the market is overall travel companies are bearing an especially heavy brunt from reduced demand and the expectation that things will get even worse. Airlines haven’t just cut China and Hong Kong flights. What’s most striking I think is the extent to which even domestic travel is already scaling back. Three observations.
SoFi Money has increased their signup offer threefold and added a host of new benefits like cell phone protection.
Alaska is making a similiar – albeit less generous – move as what JetBlue has announced. They are also suspending fees on new ticket purchases made made March 11, but they are only suspending fees until March 11. (Update: That was mistaken info provided by Alaska.)
Los Angeles is is considering letting people who take public transit to the airport have priority security. This isn’t PreCheck or CLEAR, just priority line access for the regular security queue, and follows a program at Boston Logan for people who take a shuttle bus or ferry to the airport.
Priority security isn’t actually free, in other words it isn’t costless. “When everybody’s priority, nobody is.” Grant everyone priority and they’re behind everyone else who is also priority that got there first.
LATAM is the largest airline in South America. With Delta’s move to acquire 20% of the airline, LATAM is leaving oneworld and its planned joint venture with American Airlines to align itself with the Atlanta-based carrier.
News of Delta’s plan only came out in the fall, and they’re already launching reciprocal mileage-earning and redemption starting April 1.
When hotels aren’t making the award space available to members that they should I’ve had good success getting the loyalty program to intervene. I’ve had especially good success with Hilton, such as with the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem and the Waldorf Astoria Grand Wailea on Maui.
Readers reach out to me all the time with award redemption problems and I do my best to get them solved, week after week.
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If you’re looking for green shoots in the coronavirus story, here’s one from Delta: even as there’s concerning news this morning about a person in California contracting the virus without having had recent international travel or having been known to come into contact with someone who was infected, there’s some indication that business in China is recovering.
At least Delta Air Lines cargo thinks so.
If you have a previously purchased airline ticket, JetBlue’s normal cancellation rules apply. However if you buy a new ticket starting tomorrow through March 11 for travel completed by June 1, no cancellation fees will apply.
The airline says this is about getting consumers to buy tickets who are afraid of coronovirus, and the policy even applies to their basic economy and vacation package fares.
I’m not locking myself in a cabin in the woods. I’m doing the disaster-preparedness thinking that I should have done already, unrelated to coronovirus.
The closest analogue in my lifetime may have been Y2K preparedness, and that turned out to be a nothingburger. It was sure eerie to be flying on January 1, 2000 on board a nearly empty United Airlines Boeing 777 from Los Angeles to Washington Dulles. The plane didn’t just operate, it operated on time, and everything else worked fine too.
However the thing about disasters is they aren’t exactly predictable in terms of how or when they manifest, and thinking through preparedness can make good sense even if this turns out to be a non-event in the middle of the U.S. where I live.
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 »
