They say any flight you walk away from is a good flight. But out of flights that all passengers walked away from this one may have been the worst: Air France stranded 282 passengers for three days. In Siberia. Oh, and they had no Russian visas so required constant police monitoring.
Last Thursday a Ryanair Boeing 737 was preparing to depart Bordeaux, France for London Stansted airport when French authorities stopped the aircraft, prevents passengers from boarding, and seized the jet.
France offered the subsidies illegal. Ryanair complied with its obligations. And France gets its money back?
On Saturday I wrote about four great ways to earn LifeMiles, points in Avianca’s Star Alliance frequent flyer program.
They’re now an American Express transfer partner as well as a Citibank transfer partner.
Delta announced restrictions on accessing their airport lounges, limiting use to passengers flying the airline or one of its partners same day. Club members could no longer use their club unless also paying Delta or its partners additional money to travel.
So American announced that same restriction. And a couple of weeks later, surprising no one in the known universe, United followed. American also announced an increase in club prices.
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.
Winter is a rough time for the US travel industry all around. Business travel dries up and hotel occupancy falls. That’s not good for airlines either. Leisure travel is heavy around the holidays, and among passengers looking to escape the cold, but weather wreaks havoc across the system.
Even if you’re flying from Miami to Los Angeles your inbound aircraft might be coming from snowing Chicago O’Hare.
China Southern has become a stepchild within the SkyTeam alliance, with Delta taking an equity stake in China Eastern and China Eastern taking an equity stake in Air France. Moreover with Delta’s Korean Air joint venture, China Southern Guangzhou connections become less important still.
American Airlines took an equity stake in China Southern (natch) but their codesharing relationship was limited by SkyTeam rules.
I’ve previously suggested that frequent flyer executives have their compensation paid out in airline miles. Then their incentives would be aligned with their customers to support the value of the currency.
Do you think airline employees would accept their pay in travel vouchers? If not then why should investors?
Uber has announced a new loyalty program called Uber Rewards. It’s an improvement for customers because there’s earning for Uber transactions — you get rebates you did not get before — and better treatment for frequent Uber riders.
On Monday Spanish language El Pais reported that British Airways parent company IAG was in talks with that country’s government about ensuring the airline conglomerate would be a European – rather than UK – company once Britain leaves the EU, if no bilateral aviation deal is done in time.
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 »
