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.
Three and a half years ago American Airlines and Qantas announced an expanded joint venture. American was launching Sydney and Auckland service, Qantas Sydney – San Francisco. And they indicated there would be more new routes in the offing as a result of the partnership.
They proposed to extend their partnership to coordinate schedules and pricing and share revenue on Pacific flights (but not Hawaii routes). The Obama administration said no. The Trump administration has now said yes.
Southwest Airlines started out as an underdog fighting government cronyism meant to keep it from flying. Now it’s the beneficiary of government cronyism meant to keep others from flying. The Supreme Court isn’t going to undo that, though Congress should. However the court could fix an important precedent that allowed Love Field gates to be taken from their owner without payment.
The only club at the airport is the USO Lounge. There’s no American, United, or Delta lounges, and no Priority Pass or other pay-in lounge.
HMSHost, though, is advertising for an Admirals Club bartender.
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 Dowell family found three seats together in the last row of their Boeing 737-800, and were struggling to juggle their bags and accoutrements for their baby. That’s when Wesley, one of the flight attendants on board, offered to hold 9-month old Alayna while they got themselves situated.
She was “screaming her head off for quite a while” while inflight so Wesley came back and offered to take her — walking her up and down the aisle, shushing her, and calming her. He did this for 15 minutes, “rubbing her back, walking up and down the aisle like it was just a day in the park” before returning her to her parents where she fell asleep.
The airport’s former manager is in the midst of a federal criminal trial. James Warner is accused of “fabricating invoices, overcharging the airport for work performed by contractors and receiving more than $5 million worth of kickbacks during a four-year period” — which is even more than Detroit’s former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick took in payoffs.
Apparently — and unsurprisingly — Star Alliance member airlines were resistant to giving new benefits to a higher tier of alliance partner elite, preferring to keep exclusive benefits for their own elites and for joint venture partner airlines.
Last month I received several questions from readers about why United wasn’t showing award space on Air Canada that appeared to be available to every other Star Alliance partner?
If you called United and spoke to an agent they’d generally be able to ‘see’ the inventory (in other words, X and I buckets for economy and business appeared to have space) but they couldn’t book it. What’s more that’s at a time when Air Canada availability looked excellent when searching on other partner websites, like Singapore Airlines Krisflyer, even for tough-to-get flights like Vancouver – Sydney.
THAThai Airways has transferred a lot of its domestic and regional flying to THAI Smile, its lower cost subsidiary which operates 20 Airbus A320 aircraft. That makes award travel to many Thai cities problematic, because THAI Smile isn’t a Star Alliance member so miles from United, Aeroplan, LifeMiles and other Star programs don’t allow redemption on THAI Smile flights.
Thai Airways itself no longer operates any narrowbody aircraft.
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 »
