Two Award Booking Requests Where I Failed to Deliver and One Where I Refused to Help

by Gary Leff

syndeyhouse
Jan 21 2020

We’ve had thousands of successfully booked awards. Things aren’t as easy as when I started. I once helped a family of 7 fly together non-stop roundtrip in Lufthansa first class. Getting started booking awards during the Great Recession with airline premium cabins empty and award space plentiful made it seem like this would always be easy.

Now it’s harder work, and there are more tradeoffs. Sometimes all we can offer are connections and a passenger will only fly non-stop. My job is to explain the tradeoffs and help a client make an informed decision. And my job is also to know when I can’t (or am not comfortable) helping someone and be straight with them about it up front.

Continue Reading »

Passengers Pulled Off Delta Flight Because Of Their Cell Phone’s Name

by Gary Leff

Jan 21 2020

Two passengers from Quebec were removed from a Delta regional flight in Detroit over their cell phone’s network name, “remote detonator.”

Passengers were kept on board the regional jet for more than three hours over the incident. People still haven’t learned, it seems, that actual NSA surveillance vans don’t have network names like “NSA Surveillance Van #15”

Continue Reading »

American Airlines And LATAM Kill All Codeshares Effective February 1

by Gary Leff

plane on tarmac
Jan 20 2020

Changes need to be made for customer reservations where travel was booked on codeshares that will no longer exist. Where a customer was booked on an American Airlines-coded LATAM flight, they’re being rebooked onto the same flight with a LATAM flight number (and vice versa). Apparently the automated process at American to do this didn’t work properly for some reservations.

Continue Reading »

This Marriott Hotel Wants To Help You ‘Netflix And Chill’

by Gary Leff

Jan 20 2020

Moxy is Marriott’s brand ‘for millennials’ featuring tiny rooms that lack actual desks, meant to drive guests to escape claustrophobia into a property’s ‘social spaces’ where they’ll spend money on food and beverage. What they lack in square footage they attempt to make up for in vibe.

One way that the Moxy Denver Cherry Creek is going about this is promoting a ‘Netflix and Chill’ rate.

Continue Reading »

New Details About The American Airlines Renovation Of New York JFK Terminal 8

by Gary Leff

outside airport
Jan 19 2020

I read through the 112 page Department of Transportation approval for renovations at New York JFK terminal 8, which will facilitate the British Airways co-location with American, and learned several interesting things about the project.

The most significant new information I gleaned from the document is that American and British Airways will operate a shared lounge and that there will be a dedicated premium passenger path directly to the lounge. I don’t think I had realized though that the total number of gates in the terminal would actually decrease with this work to accommodate more widebodies.

Continue Reading »