Bastian is certainly right that alliances haven’t created seamless travel experiences for customers, and that alliances don’t allow airlines to do as much jointly as when they receive anti-trust immunity from governments to work together, as with a joint venture.
However he overgeneralizes the importance of this to alliances as a whole, rather than recognizing alliances simply haven’t helped Delta as much as they benefit other airlines.
I don’t know what the substance was in the bulk toiletry and it really doesn’t matter. That these get tampered with in practice should be enough to stop the project in its tracks. And 5000 Marriott points as an apology for this is genuinely offensive.
How can the hotel expect to charge for a room that is so poorly cared for by housekeeping, and that jeopardizes a guest’s health by allowing the toiletries to be compromised in this way?
Barclays has brought back their best-ever 75,000 mile offer for the AAdvantage® Aviator® Business Mastercard®. I wanted to sign my wife up for this but just missed it, so this is in the chute for me.
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.
When Hilton eliminated award charts they promised hotels wouldn’t get more expensive. At the time the most expensive property was 95,000 points per night. In February they introduced a new 120,000 point level.
At the time it was only for one new property.
Since I earned the full year’s status through last year’s challenge, during the back half of 2018, I assumed I would have the status for all of 2019 and I’d be able to spend all of 2019 requalifying in order to keep the status for 2020. However, oddly, that’s not how this works.
Over the summer the carrier cancelled more flights than anyone, faced not just with a mechanics’ job action but also too much deferred maintenance and management failure to deploy parts where they were needed.
However the month of September was American’s best in two years based on the most important metric of on-time arrivals.
As far as I can tell only American schedules LaGuardia departures before 6 a.m. While it’s desirable to get out ahead of other airlines to be first in the departure queue at the crowded airport, those flights push back and… wait. It’s unclear to me the benefit of pushing back more than 5 and 10 minutes early.
The economics of co-brand credit cards used to favor banks much more than airlines, though they’ve been lucrative for the airlines for years. By the time of United Airlines’ bankruptcy in 2002 the airline in some sense continued flying to support the underlying credit card business.
With banks spending more on their co-brand partnerships and more to reward consumers they’ve gone looking for ways to trim costs.
The number one thing that determines if you have a great flight is the seat next to you being empty. Having that extra space makes everything better, from the friendliness of flight attendants to the tastiness of the snacks.
It turns out you can ensure this happens every time that you fly. And Kate Middleton knows the trick.
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 »
