New Study Ranks Airline Business And First Class Award Availability

by Gary Leff

Jan 22 2020

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.

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Department of Transportation Plans To Ban Nearly All Emotional Support Animals

by Gary Leff

turkey in airline cabin
Jan 22 2020

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.

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Why Do Foreign Carriers Re-check Your Boarding Pass When You Enter the Aircraft?

by Gary Leff

boardingpasscheck
Jan 22 2020

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.

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The Official American Airlines Onboard Service Policy Guide

by Gary Leff

Jan 22 2020

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.

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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.

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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”

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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.

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