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.
Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Holidays have opened a new departure ‘lounge’ on Barbados. It’s a departure beach that includes check-in and baggage dropoff.
Emirates is in negotiations to acquire Etihad, forming the world’s largest airline by number of passengers carried.
Etihad has been cutting costs and slashing routes after a $1.5 billion loss last year and a $2 billion loss the year before. They’ve been expected to walk away from some aircraft orders. I’ve read much of the changes at Emirates as cleaning up the balance sheet before getting acquired.
Singapore Airlines offers much better award availability to people using their own KrisFlyer miles than to people using miles from partner frequent flyer programs like United.
Right now Singapore Airlines is offering discounts on awards for their non-stop flights between the US and Singapore: business for the price of premium economy, and premium economy for the price of coach, which means up to 43% off.
Ever since David Dao was dragged off a United Express flight by police and beaten last April it’s been clear to most people that we have a problem in the airline industry. Customer service problems are turned into law enforcement problems.
Delta called the police on a woman who began taping her interaction in the baggage service office at Boston Logan airport. No law was being broken and no one was in physical danger.
A month ago JetBlue raised its first checked bag fee to $30. United followed the Friday afternoon of Labor Day Weekend presumably looking for the news to get buried with the rest of the trash when no one was watching.
Now Delta has jumped on board with $30 first checked bag fees (up from $25) and $40 second checked bag fees (up from $35).
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.
Star Alliance program Avianca LifeMiles has a hotel booking site that is really Rocketmiles. And they have a quintuple (5x) miles offer for five hours only.
Five hours limits their exposure, because this is incredibly rich. When they ran triple miles for a single day last month I saw 15,000 miles on a $380 stay. This would yield 25,000 miles for the same stay. It can be like buying miles for what they’re worth and getting hotel stays free.
Cathay Pacific misspelled their own name on a freshly painted plane. Apparently the painters doing the job had no F’s left to give.
The airline dubbed this ‘a special livery’ while acknowledging the plane would need to go in for warranty work.
Business class fares originating in Europe to the US are often cheaper than fares which originate in the U.S. I occasionally see $1000 roundtrip fares originating in Europe. Last year there was even a $400 one-way Europe-US fare on Star Alliance member TAP Air Portugal.
TAP is back with amazing fares across the Pond, originating in Europe. You can book them either one way (Europe to U.S.) or roundtrip (Europe – U.S. – Europe). In fact $651 or $656 one way fares are available most days from mid-November through summer.
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 »
