Southwest Airlines lets passengers pick their seats on a first-come, first-served basis. You board earlier if you buy the most expensive tickets, if you’re a frequent traveler, or if you pay for early boarding. Or if you fake the need for a wheelchair.
That’s why Southwest Airlines has more wheelchair passengers than any other airline.
One recent change is that you can give someone a trip credit to use for their own travel. You’ve cancelled your ticket, and the credit can be used by someone else. But if they buy a ticket worth less than the full value of the trip credit, the residual value now goes back to you.
United Airlines will pay flight attendants not to take a hotel room for the night during layovers on their trips. This is called the “Hotel Gainsharing” program, and pays “at least $20 per night based on how much United saves in canceling a hotel room that it no longer requires.”
Barclays just isn’t big enough to bid effectively for the whole American AAdvantage card portfolio. Citibank had the chance to take the whole thing, and also to offer points transfers to AAdvantage as part of its ThankYou-brand card product suite. But they balked at the price. Ultimately American got the biggest deal possible by leaving two card issuers in place. That could change.
In yesterday’s announcement about airport lounges, JetBlue’s benefit cuts got short shrift in coverage. The airline’s elite members will no longer receive seating benefits or flight changes on basic economy fares, and they’re dropping the BLADE helicopter transfer partnership.
Italy is hot. It was a focus of limit summer 2025 Europe additions by American Airlines. And it’s a focus of Delta’s latest route network changes as well.
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GHA Discovery is the loyalty program across 40 hotel brands and over 800 properties such as Viceroy, Pan Pacific, Outrigger, Kempinski, NH Hotels, Marco Polo, Anantara and Capella.
They’re just wrapping up one of the boldest earning promotions I’ve ever seen offering up to a 94% rebate on stays (excluding taxes and fees). They’ve been adding elite benefits like breakfast at several brands since the program’s relaunch three years ago. And they now have an exceptionally broad status match campaign.
Delta’s President views SkyMiles as a ‘giveaway program’ rather than something his customers invest in and can expect a return from. So it’s no surprise that Delta can charge more than 4 times as many miles for the same Delta seat that their partners will charge to their own customers. The Vice President running SkyMiles even admits they’re not trying to compete over offering value to customers.
Lebanon’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation has banned passengers departing from Beirut from traveling with walkie talkies and pagers – either with them into the cabin, or in checked luggage. I fully expect calls to broaden the ban put in place by Lebanon – to electronics broadly, and even wifi, out of fear that a connected device could be ordered to detonate.
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 »
