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.
Chase has announced two major changes to the British Airways Visa, without taking anything away: faster earning and taking on high taxes and fees on awards. The important takeaway is that the card will let you redeem British Airways Avios with less of a blow from the carrier’s surcharges. As a result, the card can add value even when you’re redeeming transferred Chase or American Express points.
Delta Vacations will let you redeem SkyMiles at twice the usual value through Friday August 30 at 11:59 p.m.
As long as you book a two night hotel stay as part of your trip you can get two cents apiece for Delta miles.
TSA has backed down in the face of employees’ union objections and the requirement will not go into effect.
The Sioux City crash is one of the most famous of the last forty years. A DC-10 from Denver’s old Stapleton airport to Chicago O’Hare had 296 passengers and crew on board. 111 people died in the United Sioux City crash, but it’s considered a miracle and a testament to the crew on board that the rest survived.
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.
On Saturday I wrote about Prince William and Kate Middleton taking a coach FlyBe trip. The royals are no stranger to flying commercial, and as I noted even flying economy. At times it’s been because there weren’t any first class seats available, and other times because the best seats from a security standpoint are at the back of the aircraft.
This time, however, blog commenter Pete points out that the aircraft they flew turns out to be a substitute Embraer ERJ-145 brought in just for them.
Between the poor operational performance American Airlines has suffered this summer, the airline’s cramming more seats into coach and surly service, the carrier’s employees have a frequent need to apologize to customers.
Airline crew can frequently show an ID and avoid being accosted with nude-o-scopes and metal detectors. Occasionally that’s been tempting for drug smugglers, but drugs aren’t the TSA’s purpose anyway. Still as a result crew do sometimes go through checks.
The Known Crewmember program, “a joint initiative between Airlines for America (A4A) and the Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l (ALPA),” has become more liberalized and useful over time — four years ago crew started being allowed to go through even when traveling personally and out of uniform. That was subsequently limited a bit. And this week it’s being significantly curtailed.nnnn
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.
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 »
