Delta immediately turned the tables on US-Latin America flying by announcing plans to take a 20% stake in LATAM, South America’s largest airline. Delta is pulling them out of oneworld and out of a pending joint venture with American Airlines.
One side benefit that must have been sweet for Delta, though has gone largely unremarked upon, is the extra benefit that comes from sticking it to Qatar Airways. Now Qatar is trolling Delta back.
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.
Marriott has a new global promotion (registration required by December 31) and it’s a secret promotion. What we know about it so far is incredibly weak. You don’t find out full details of the promotion until after your second stay.
Other airlines will be picking up the slack bringing package holiday goers to Spanish resorts. Customers out money in the short-term likely won’t be rebooking until next season, however. Spain’s response is a complex web of arcane regulation and subsidy.
Moving maps, thousands of movies and TV shows, and systems that let you create playlists and favorites and even keep your favorites from flight to flight using your frequent flyer number, inflight entertainment has come a long way.
As KLM celebrates 100 years they’ve made a ton of material available from their archives. The very first inflight video screens is something I had never seen before.
Status does a great job motivating customers who buy coach, or at least fly coach a substantial portion of the time – for instance the road warrior whose company will spring for business class internationally once or twice a year but has a rule of 6 hours or more for premium cabin so domestic trips are mostly out up front.
Status does almost nothing to motivate someone who buys all premium cabin tickets. When elite status spending requirements are so high they’re met primarily by people who buy first class, elite status is meaningless.
The best deal in travel has to be the Southwest Airlines Companion Pass.
There’s no question that a rewards card with big initial bonus offer is the easiest and fastest way to earn a Companion Pass (in addition to being really big on its own towards reward travel). However there are other fast ways to earn a Companion Pass even without a Southwest Airlines co-brand credit card. And it’s even more enticing with a new 2000 point bonus offer.
The drive to ban reward travel confuses the average and marginal effect of flying on the environment. Saver award travel has, by definition, the lowest environmental impact of any flying. Airlines make saver inventory available when they’re flying anyway and they believe a seat won’t sell.
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.
We’re a long way from back when United Airlines used to offer men-only flights. This year U.S. airlines started offering new gender options to passengers when booking their tickets.
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 »
