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.
Unionized flight attendants — and flight attendants at airlines whose procedures mirror union work rules — get to work the most desirable trips based on seniority. Senior flight attendants at large international airlines can jet away to Sydney, to Buenos Aires, to Paris while more junior flight attendants overnight in Des Moines.
Those longer trips aren’t just more exotic. They pay more (more hours) in a short amount of time, have longer layovers, and may entail staying at better hotels. Secondary markets developed. Last year I wrote about American flight attendants renting out their seniority for $200 a pop. Now United flight attendants are doing it.
A year ago we learned that Apple was dropping its co-brand relationship with Barclays and launching a new Mastercard with Goldman Sachs. That didn’t matter much since their existing card wasn’t particularly strong. There was hope the new card would be much better!
It isn’t.
This past Saturday a 38-year-old man tried to travel to Simferopol International Airport in Crimea on Ural Airlines flight 525 from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport wearing nothing at all.
The man argued he had a perfectly valid reason for flying naked: he yelled that “clothing impairs the aerodynamics of the body” and that he flies “with more agility when undressed.”
Star Alliance frequent flyer program Avianca LifeMiles is offering a 125% bonus on transferred miles. For every 1000 miles you transfer from one account to the other, the recipient receives a bonus 1250 miles. That’s effectively buying miles at 1.2 cents apiece.
This is an interesting opportunity. Hyatt introduced new category 8 redemptions for the most expensive SLH properties that you can earn and redeem points at.
The Sailrock Resort in Turks & Caicos is currently category 7 (30,000 points per night) but they’re bumping it to category 8 (40,000 points per night) effective April 8. The price is going up because reservations now include roundtrip domestic airfare. And you’ll get that air travel for the lower points price still for bookings made prior to the increase.
At the beginning of 2019 I flagged that United removed its award chart tables from its website and rolled out premium economy awards without any award chart at all. This made me wonder whether United would eventually eliminate award charts entirely, as Delta has done, and move to align redemption more closely to the price of a ticket.
Interestingly United appears to be making reduced mileage awards available when ticket prices are low on short-distance routes like New York LaGuardia – Chicago, Los Angeles – Las Vegas, and slightly longer flights like Newark – Fort Lauderdale.
Police are warning about an email scam aimed at getting you to open an attachment that will infect your computer by preying on worries over the currently-grounded Boeing 737 MAX.
The email may be framed as coming from a “private analyst” and includes an attachment with “leaked data” that warns of another aircraft that will “go down soon” and encourages you to share the file with your contacts — not just infecting your computer, but virally infecting others as well via a trusted source (you).
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.
ou simply cannot believe anything Marriott tells you, if they answer you at all. Much frustration would be avoided if you’d just research answers to questions yourself, on blogs, instead of asking Marriott and assuming what they tell you is accurate.
Case in point: Marriott says Platinum member upgrades don’t include suites.
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 »
