As Qantas retires its fleet of Boeing 747s, Boeing 747 – ‘Sydney’ (VH-OEF) will fly its last flight from Sydney to Los Angeles on February 9, 2020.
And notably there are award seats available in economy, premium economy, and business class on this nostalgia flight.
Several days ago I flagged the possibility that Marriott would be eliminating the great annual offer of 10 elite nights for booking a meeting at a hotel. Before the Marriott and Starwood programs were combined Marriott used to let you earn 10 elite nights per meeting with no annual cap.
Word on the street was that this offer would be going away entirely. And indeed a leaked internal communication from Marriott bears this out.
Earlier this year a new airline standard was rolled out no longer requiring passengers to declare a gender to fly. Several states provide an ‘X’ option on their IDs for gender.
United Airlines was first to offer both U(undisclosed) and X(unspecified) as a gender option this spring. Since on or about December 10th American Airlines has adopted this standard.
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The American Airlines website and mobile app will let you book tickets until two hours prior to departure. However American has relaxed its ticketing deadlines and will now allow booking domestic travel through reservations up until 60 minutes prior to travel (90 minutes for international).
Two years ago American had to apologize to its pilots over a photo of pilots mixing cocktails in its inflight magazine – the image of pilot drinking is that serious – and that’s even without getting into issues of stealing the bottle from the plane.
Access to wholesale rates, a best rate guarantee, and 10% off of that makes it worth poking around this week for potential big hotel savings. One reader has saved thousands on Hyatt all-inclusives. Ends Saturday.
We know that in 2020 Air Canada plans to re-launch their frequent flyer program. We don’t know a lot about the new program yet, other than that they will keep an award chart for long haul and partner travel and that domestic flight pricing will be dynamic.
We now know they’ll be continuing to add surcharges onto (at least some) redemptions.
>Here’s an interesting opportunity. South American mega-carrier LATAM flies to Easter Island. Easter Island is a Chilean territory, so LATAM Chile operates from Santiago.
Once a week on Mondays, though that Boeing 787 continues on from Easter Isand to Tahiti and returns to Easter Island on Tuesday. And award availability on that flight is really good.
About six weeks ago Garmin introduced a new auto land feature for private aircraft. It senses when a pilot is non-responsive, and it can be easily activated by passengers. It finds the nearest appropriate airport, communicates with air traffic control and lands the plane on its own.
Most aviation accidents in the U.S. involve light aircraft. An average of three times a year a private pilot becomes incapacitated while flying. This looks like a game changer for worst case scenario events.
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 »
