Once again it’s AAdvantage that drove American’s profit but to their credit they didn’t actually lose money flying airplanes in the fourth quarter.
During the earnings call Senior Vice President Don Casey noted that this is the last quarter where American gets a boost from changes resulting from frequent flyer accounting changes.
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.
IdeaWorks made 3600 award searches for premium cabin awards across 18 airlines. They always searched for 2 seats at a time for travel between June and October. For each airline they looked at the 10 routes over 2500 miles with the most seats on offer.
United, Delta, and Scandinavian are the worst airlines at offering premium cabin award space on their own flights, according to Jay Sorenson’s new study. Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa, Singapore, Emirates and Etihad are the best.
If the Department of Transportation moves forward with a regulation that matches what is says is its current thinking, only dogs will be permitted as psychiatric service animals. They’ll have to be trained, have good behavior, and know how to potty. They’ll have to stay in a passenger’s foot area. But Delta’s blanket ban on pit bulls will be overturned.
US airlines check your boarding pass before you enter the jet bridge, and that’s it — while many international airlines have flight attendants standing at the door of the aircraft who will look at your boarding pass again.
Flight attendants on most airlines around the world will see you’re on the right plane, direct you to the correct class of service, and tell you which side of the plane to proceed down in the case of a widebody. Although it’s common on single aisle aircraft as well.
Whether you get a meal or a snack on American Airlines depends on the route you’re flying and what cabin you’re in. In addition to the length of flight and whether you’re in first class or coach, some routes get ‘special treatment’ and better food options than others.
Here’s a simple listing, with handy charts, so you’ll know what sort of meal or snack to expect on your next flight.
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.
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”
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.
You can fly roundtrip from New York to most anywhere you’d want to go in Asia for about $1800 roundtrip in business class. And the fare should even be refundable for a small fee.
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 »
