American Express is increasing earn on some cards, adding new benefits, and taking away others while increasing annual fees for new cardmembers (and at renewal for existing cardmembers).
New perks will include access to Centurion lounges for Reserve cardmembers. The re-launch of benefits and earn will happen effective January 30, 2020 and the limited time offer will run October 1 – 30, 2019.
American just announced details of their Tokyo Haneda flights at the end of last week. They still have an announcement of new routes with Qantas coming up. But right after losing their LATAM partnership they’ve rushed out an announcement of new service to South America, and packaged it with other disparate scheduling moves – perhaps to make it look more robust.
After all, announcing a move by IAG low cost carrier LEVEL makes little sense when that airline isn’t even a partner.
Mainland China forced Cathay Pacific to fire its CEO, a scalp on the wall over the airline’s insufficient initial deference to the mainland during mass protests in Hong Kong.
The Chinese government placed onerous restrictions on the airline’s flying in order to pressure the carrier to purge employees sympathetic to anti-Beijing efforts. These efforts worked to bring the airline into line, and it’s created a culture of fear at the carrier.
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.
Bank of America adopted two new rules for card approval over the last two years. Now they have another one that is either stricter – or less strict – than Chase’s 5/24, depending on whether you have a banking relationship with them.
Yesterday Delta announced an offer to assist passengers stranded by American Airlines as their partnership with LATAM breaks up.
Now Delta has flushed their offer announcement down the memory hole.
Last year a Japanese airport employee was filmed actually cleaning luggage before passengers picked up their bags. Each and every bag gets checked for scuffs or marks on arrival, then the employee takes a white cloth to those bags which need it.
So it’s no surprise to see this Japan Airlines employee making sure every bag is laid symmetrically on the belt at baggage claim.
Barclays is moving away from issuing its own cards and acquiring its own consumer financial services customers, and focusing more heavily on co-brand relationships like their deal with American Airlines. As they work to grow on the back of co-brands, they need both more partnerships and to market those partnerships more aggressively. And they need to introduce new products to sell to their co-brand customers.
American Airlines updated their communication to employees about the upcoming loss of South American carrier LATAM as a partner at the end of the business day on Friday. Their message is two-fold: the LATAM partnership was no big deal, and they’re still strong in Latin America.
After the shocking announcement that Delta will buy 20% of Latin America’s largest airline LATAM while that carrier will leave the oneworld alliance and their joint venture with American is off, strange things started happening.
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 »
