Alaska is Surveying Lounge Customers: Should They Partner With American, Delta, or United?

Dec 12 2018

What’s Alaska’s path forward? It’s interesting to see their survey about what their customers want in airport lounge partnerships.

The airline is having customers compare features and membership price points for combining an Alaska Lounge membership with access to United Clubs, American Airlines Admirals Clubs, and Delta SkyClubs as well as with an unnamed partner lounge network.

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8 Things I Just Learned About American Airlines Plans for Flights, Planes, and Product

first class cabin
Dec 12 2018

American Airlines hosts a ‘state of the airline’ event for employees after its earnings calls. There senior management shares their vision for the company and employees can ask questions. In addition to those questions that are asked live, there are followup questions that get asked – and answered – in writing.

The airline has shared written responses to several employee questions, and some of those contained information I did not know (although in some cases may have assumed).

Where do they want to fly bigger planes? Will they be updating business class seats on certain aircraft? How far along are they installing satellite wifi?

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Ex-Starwood Senior VP of Technology Dishes on Marriott’s Data Breach

robber being caught red handed
Dec 12 2018

There are reasons to be skeptical that the breach took place in 2014, rather than there were records in the data warehouse which could have been taken that dated to 2014.

Regardless of what did or didn’t happen, and whom to blame, we’re clearly not getting the full story from Marriott. And since it’s our very sensitive personal information they failed to safeguard, we should be demanding it.

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British Airways Fuel Surcharge Class Action Settlement Miles are Posting

airline cabin first class
Dec 12 2018

Back in June I wrote about the class action settlement over fuel surcharges imposed by British Airways on U.S. customers between November 9, 2006 and April 17, 2013.

Sadly British Airways stopped calling these member taxes ‘fuel surcharges’ (which legally have to be related to the cost of fuel) and started calling them ‘surcharges’ (money for nothing) and they can keep on penalizing Avios redemptions to their heart’s content.

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American Cracking Down on Award Availability Trick (and Gutting Free Elite Changes)

airline cabin
Dec 11 2018

A little over a year ago American Airlines started offering more coach award space, and they did it in an interesting way. They started opening up award space on a married-segment basis — availability wasn’t for a specific flight but for an entire itinerary.

Agents are now being reprimanded for helping customers to work around these restrictions. And married segments make it very difficult to make changes to an award later, a real blow to Executive Platinums and ConciergeKey members who have free changes as a program benefit.

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