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.
There’s a fantastic business class fare between Los Angeles and several cities in China on China Southern. Deals start as low as $1534 roundtrip, and involve a connection.
Chase has added Emirates Skywards as a points transfer partner. You can also transfer American Express and Capital One points to Emirates.
Here’s how redemptions on Emirates works – how many points, where to find award space, what you can accomplish with their miles.
For the past several years Hilton has almost always been offering double points. That’s necessary, because without double points the program’s rebate value is lower than competitors. That’s also what we should expect.
The road map for where Hilton has gone with their program was laid out by Jeff Diskin, now Hilton Executive Vice President, back in 2010.
Loyalty marketing is a near-universal. It has two components, recognition (elite benefits) and rewards (rebates). Different elements move the needle more for different customers, different businesses can authentically utilize each in varying proportions, and some products can truly replace traditional awareness advertising with loyalty marketing while others need to first generate broad attention.
When a business develops a relationship with a customer it doesn’t always realize it.
Though Prince Harry and Megan Markle came under fire recently for flying private they’re also known to fly commercial, and even flew coach for a New Year’s getaway. Sitting in the very back of an aircraft may be the best position where there are security concerns.
Prince Harry is also known to fly British Airways intra-European business class which is like flying coach. His grandfather Prince Philip, however, once remarked that air travel can be quite nice “provided you don’t travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.”
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.
Is American Airlines international first class worth it? There’s no suites with doors. There’s no fine dining compared to peers selling international first class. The benefit surely comes from the service, right?
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 »
