If you paid British Airways fuel surcharges between November 9, 2006 and April 17, 2013 you should get points deposited into your account — without doing anything at all — or if you prefer (and fill out a simple form) 16.9% of your cash back.
Passengers Leap Out of 737 Through Emergency Exits When Man Says He Has a Bomb
A passenger joked about a bomb and everyone started leaping out of the plane through the emergency exits on Monday. And 10 passengers were injured, some hurt “after falling through the plane’s engine.”
Here’s video of the spontaneous evacuation with passengers jumping off the aircraft. Flight crew did not instruct passengers to leave the aircraft.
United Wants to Return to New York JFK — And Doesn’t Know How to Do It
United pulled out of New York JFK entirely in fall 2015. A year ago the airline’s President Scott Kirby said that was a mistake. Now he wants to return to New York JFK and doesn’t know how to do it.
When the airline left JFK it was because bean counters looked only at revenue and expense for the those particular JFK flights and missed the bigger revenue picture — lucrative corporate contracts which made other routes profitable, and which they lost without the JFK service.
New Class Action Lawsuit Over AA.com Airfare Pricing
The plaintiff would like you to think of this case as picking a pack of gum up from the store shelf, getting to the register, and being asked for more money than the posted sign.
I think of this more as showing the clerk at the register the list of what you want to buy, including an auto-generated price estimate, and the clerk goes in the back and checks and says they’re all out of the limited inventory of discounted product but they’re still willing to sell it to you at regular price.
Airbnb IPO and Pay Child Support to Travel Internationally
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.
American Express Adds Lufthansa Lounge Access Benefit to Platinum, Centurion Cards
American Express has now made the benefit official, expanded it, and clarified access rules. Effective June 1, Platinum and Centurion cardmembers have access to Lufthansa lounges in Munich and Frankfurt when flying on Lufthansa, Swiss, or Austrian.
There’s even first class lounge access for Black Card cardmembers.
Etihad Set to Devalue Miles at the End of June
Over the past three years Etihad has devalued its program several times. That’s to be expected because it was so much better than others in the region. Qatar Airways caught me by surprise over the last month first announcing booking fees for awards – just a straight-up tax on redemptions – and then increasing the price of most awards about 60% overnight without notice. The earn and burn program went from middling to terrible overnight.
And now Etihad is making changes again. They’re only describing the changes in broad strokes, even though they’re going to be implemented in a month.
United Airlines Dropped Tito’s Vodka, Now Serving Wheatley From “Man Who Launched a Million Hangovers”
Wheatley comes from Buffalo Trace Distillery, owned by Sazerac, which is controlled by billionaire liquor magnate William Goldring, “the man who launched a million hangovers” and known as “the cheap-liquor billionaire.”
Singapore Airlines Business Class Award Space for 4 Passengers, US-Asia
If you have Singapore Airlines miles first class awards turn out to be easy to book — on their old 777 product from Los Angeles, and flying Airbus A380s all over the world. Provided of course that the A380 doesn’t touch the U.S. (New York JFK – Frankfurt) and isn’t their newest product.
And Singapore Airlines business class awards are frequently very available too and that’s true even on U.S. routes, especially from Houston and Los Angeles.
United’s President Hates Fare Sales, Thinks Their Product is Good Enough
United Airlines President Scott Kirby is probably the most interesting airline executive to listen to in the country because he lays out his thinking clearly in public. I think most everything he does is bad for his customers. But he has a model for how the world works and he defends it. He spoke today at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference.