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.
Multiple readers reached out to me about delayed transfers of Chase Ultimate Rewards points to Singapore Airlines Krisflyer. They made transfers and those points did not post. This seems to be for transfers originating around September 4 onward.
In late August I wrote that Chase was about to introduce their new Sapphire Banking product — but not to sign up right away because a bonus would be on its way that you should wait for. They’ve now shared what that bonus will be.
It’s been five years since Hyatt last devalued, introducing a new category 7 and raising the price of many awards. The best hotels became more expensive, suite redemptions became more expensive, but overall the weighted average of free night award prices went up just 4%.
Since that time there have been remarkably few changes to the earn and burn side of the Hyatt program. Even the total revamp and introduction of ‘World of Hyatt’ nearly two years ago was a change only to the elite program.
JetBlue flight 1151 from Tampa to San Juan was delayed yesterday, and one passenger just wasn’t going to take it. He “took down his pants.”
The passenger, who had a “rottweiler mix service dog” with him, “threatened to kill a gate agent” and assaulted a police officer — all over a 53 minute delay.
American Airlines gave employees across the board raises without insisting that the pay changes be part of a contract. The airline says that’s made it harder to get mechanics to agree to a contract. American mechanics have already gotten much of the money they’re going to get with a new contract, so there’s less incentive for employees to agree to rules changes the airline wants.
American has asked for a federal mediator to get involved and wrap up a contract with mechanics. Here’s the airline’s letter to employees about the move:
Aeroplan has been unable to book award travel on several Star Alliance airlines since late August. I reached out to them to see what was going on and they assured me that the issue was a technical problem, that they were working on it, and that they wanted to get it fixed quickly.
However Aeroplan seemed confident that wouldn’t be the case here. I wanted to see the proof that this would be fixed quickly, rather than taking them at their word. It turns out that they fixed it quickly (mostly).
The first Boeing 787-8 that American Airlines received is the first one to be receiving a premium economy retrofit, and will become the first one in the fleet with only 20 seats up front.
On September 4, American’s Boeing 787-8 registration number N800AN arrived at Chicago O’Hare from London Heathrow. Then it flew the next day to Everett, Washington’s Paine Field. And it’s been sitting in the Pacific Northwest ever since.
Brian Sumers interviewed Emirates CEO Tim Clark who revealed to him that the airline plans to launch a premium economy cabin.
He wants to make sure premium economy isn’t too nice because they don’t want it to be viewed as a ‘good enough’ alternative to pricier business class.
American boards earlier than the time they put on boarding passes for a couple of different aircraft types. This is a known issue at American, and one they’ve chosen not to spend on the IT to fix. It’s one reason you may show up at the designated boarding time and find your flight halfway boarded.
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 »
