American Express Membership Rewards points transfer to a variety of different airline programs and so some hotels. Generally your best redemptions with Amex points is going to be airline transfers. And they offer occasional transfer bonuses.
Right now points transfers to Cathay Pacific are showing up with targeted bonuses.
British Airways issued a press release saying that the “personal and financial details” of customers that have used its website and mobile app to book travel have been stolen, but that this does not include travel details (itineraries) or passport information. This all happened late Wednesday night London time, From 22:58 BST August 21 2018 until 21:45 BST September 5 2018 inclusive, the personal and financial details of customers making bookings on ba.com and the airline’s app were compromised. The breach has been resolved and our website is working normally. They say they’re reaching out to customers they believe have been affected, but that anyone worried about it should “contact their banks or credit card providers” and do whatever those companies suggest. In other words they have no suggestions and aren’t funding options at this…
According to Hilton there are bigger initial offers coming for the suite of Hilton Honors credit cards from American Express on September 11.
The percentage of American Airlines seats occupied by award customers has been lower than that of competitor airlines and had been declining ever since US Airways management took over at the airline. American was been filling about 6% of seats with awards compared to nearly 8% at United and Delta and 13% at Southwest.
AAdvantage President Bridget Blaise-Shamai reported in June that they’re “on a path towards putting our availability much more closer to the competitive levels of like a Delta or a United.”
The TSA makes most travelers take off their shoes, many go barefoot on germ-laden floors. And most of us assumed, I think, that they weren’t doing much to wash or sanitize bins.
Your fellow sick passengers touch the bins, they even put their dirty tissue sand handkerchiefs in them before going through the nude-o-scope. TSA employees get gloves to wear, passengers don’t.
Robert L. Johnson is best known for founding BET, Black Entertainment Television in 1979 and selling it to Viacom for $3 billion in 2000. He serves on boards like Lowe’s, the NBA Board of Governors, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and is a past board member of Hilton Hotels, General Mills, and the United Negro College Fund.
He’s an accomplished man, he’s well traveled, and he owns hotels — his RLJ Lodging Trust owns about 150 of them. So he’s certainly used to checking into hotels. But not this one.
When the new Marriott program launched their terms and conditions said that Platinums would get an upgrade if available at check-in to an ‘enhanced room’. That’s not what we were promised.
The terms now say that a Platinum is to receive an upgrade to the best room available up to and including suites. Of course there are some limitations.
This morning an Emirates flight was quarantined on arrival at New York JFK with sick passengers on board.
Some initial reports suggested that 100 were ill. Emirates said it was 10. The most recent information we have is that 19 passengers were deemed to have medical issues. Ten were transported to the hospital, while nine declined medical treatment and were released.
What do we know at this point? That Vanilla Ice says he was on board.
Delta’s Executive Vice President and CFO Paul Jacobson spoke this morning at the Cowen and Company Global Transportation Conference. He put up a standard Delta chart showing that customers like the airline more than their competitors, and so customers are willing to spend more to fly Delta.
Jacobson offered this startling statistic. Delta had 5000 cancellations due to maintenance in 2010 and this year there will be “fewer than 100.” He says that’s “down 99% since 2010.”
Now that the new Marriott program has launched they’ve re-opened status challenges.
Normally Gold status requires 25 nights in a year and Platinum status requires 50 nights. However you can call to sign up and a Gold challenge requires 8 nights in 3 months, and a Platinum challenge requires 16 nights in 90 days.mo
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 »
