At this morning’s American Airlines shareholders meeting CEO Doug Parker claimed “there’s no doubt our customers have noticed the improvement that’s been made to the inflight product.”
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.
Just prior to airline deregulation, when Southwest Airlines had to start competing with Texas International Airlines and Braniff offering cheap fares between Houston and Dellas, they started giving out “to go” bottles of alcohol to full fare customers. They became the largest liquor distributor in the state.
For many years Southwest Airlines offered free drinks inflight to all customers. They cut that back to offering free drinks only during key business travel times. And then in 1988 they eliminated free alcohol from their flights, but started giving coupons to frequent flyers.
Here’s how you can get free and discounted drinks on Southwest Airlines today.
Back in December I wrote that based on local documents that had been uncovered the current The Club space at the Phoenix airport’s terminal 4 B concourse would be expanded and turned into two lounges, an Escape Lounge and an American Express Centurion lounge. I’ve been tracking progress on this project for over a year.
American Express is now confirming details of the Phoenix lounges, and providing renderings.
American Airlines is reportedly spending $1 billion on their new corporate campus and that’s apparently up from a previously-reported $350 million. It’s possible that’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. American has been tight-lipped about the project’s costs. However it fairly clearly represents a project that’s grown substantially more expensive.
Just keep that number in mind for a moment as we walk through the economics of American’s decision not to offer seat back entertainment for domestic passengers, instead streaming content to passenger phones.
In the movie Up in the Air Sam Elliott plays the chief pilot at American Airlines. He appears in their advertising, and meets customers on board when they hit ten million frequent flyer miles. My own lifetime counter at AAdvantage is only rounding towards 4 million, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t really happen in real life. One way to see the chief pilot, though, is to retire after a career flying for American.
On May 26, Captain Fred Swaffer flew his last flight for American after 33 years with the airline.
Earlier I wrote that tons of Hilton Honors redemptions appeared to go up 10,000 points per night indeed the bulk of 10,000 Honors point per night properties have become 20,000 points.
Under Hilton’s system they do not tell members that this is happening. I asked Hilton about it.
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.
The Doha airport features a giant Teddy Bear sculpture that’s 23 feet tall, weights 20 tons and is made out of bronze. It had previously been displayed in front of the Seagram’s Building on Park Avenue in New York.
A real bear made its way through security earlier this month at the Yelizovo airport in Far East Russia.
Travel is generally at the forefront of toleration. United, for instance, was first to offer ‘undisclosed’ and ‘unspecified’ gender options when booking a ticket. Air Italy, 49% owned by Qatar Airways, was first in Europe to let customers define gender themselves.
That seems to be the trend everywhere except the TSA where they still apparently expect passengers to conform to whatever gender stereotype matches the preferences of their screeners on any given day. You don’t have to be non-binary to run into problems, if you simply don’t appear masculine or feminine enough.
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 »
