Do you remember when people felt so attached to an airline brand that they paid more money to spend extra time flying, just to demonstrate enough loyalty for when they’d fly in the coming year? It’s hard to say there hasn’t been something lost.
The under construction Hard Rock hotel New Orleans collapsed this morning leaving one person dead and 18 people hospitalized. “[C]onstruction workers ran to safety” before “[u]pper floors began to fall on top of each other before one side of the building fell to the ground below.”
The collapse at the construction site was captured on video.
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.
I learned a lesson a couple of years ago when I gave away 106 upgrades to AwardWallet Plus. I’ve updated this post on the first 2 things you should do when you’re new to the frequent flyer hobby with an unlimited number of free upgrades. See, these giveaways of premium AwardWallet membership were controversial.
Last month I reported that American Airlines was still considering whether to allow lifetime club members to keep accessing Admirals Clubs when not flying American or its partners same day.
According to spokesperson Leslie Scott, they’ve made the decision to honor access for lifetime members. She tells me, “We are making an exception for lifetime members, we will not require them to have a same-day ticket on American or partner airline in order to access the Admirals Club.”
While Snopes actually has an entry debunking whether United Airlines has an ‘armed seating and apparel division’ the airline is now coming under fire for doing nothing over a passenger’s t-shirt.
On yesterday’s United flight UA824 from Los Angeles to Boston a passenger was wearing a t-shirt advocating hanging of journalists.
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.
Willie Walsh, the former CEO of British Airways and now head of IAG, parent company of BA, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and Vueling, has gone public that he’d do a better job than current BA CEO Alex Cruz at resolving the airline’s contract dispute with pilots.
Public efforts to throw his handpicked British Airways CEO over the side and lay blame at his feet for the failure to get a deal done aside Alex Cruz doesn’t even outsource a single IT job without Willie Walsh blessing it first.
Make no mistake, a Gol partnership is a second best. Remember that when Delta announced its deal with LATAM American’s response was to claim a LATAM joint venture wouldn’t have been that valuable to them anyway because it wouldn’t be permitted to include Chile. What mattered when making excuses for losing LATAM was Chile. Was matters when promoting a deal with Gol is Brazil. The narrative changes with the opportunity.
However it’s certainly better than giving up connecting feed in Brazil entirely. And if they could put together a secondary deal, and grow their own presence in the region, they could fight back effectively after losing LATAM. They just need to get control of the narrative quickly.
United Airlines has declared that miles no longer matter at all – a strange position for MileagePlus to take. Distance flown no longer matters for earning miles. Redeeming miles is more revenue-based with the elimination of award charts. And now even qualifying for elite status will be based on spending starting next year.
You can earn status by spending more than before and counting up the number of flights you take, or just based on spending alone. Here are 11 takeaways from this historic change.
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 »
