Just a few days ago I wrote about the steps that were necessary in order to book Cathay Pacific business class awards since they weren’t appearing available at all to partner airlines like American or Alaska.
There’s good news now, though.
United Airlines held its earnings call this morning. The airline’s stock price jumped with release of their performance for the second quarter and during the call.
Since earnings beat estimates it was a more upbeat call than many of United’s recent run-ins with the investor community. It also largely focused on how they plan to drive earnings growth despite potential geopolitical and fuel price challenges.
For a company invested in being an experiential brand outside of hotel stays, trying to earn a revenue premium by ‘helping you be a better you’ through acquisitions live Miraval and Exhale Spas, Hyatt has been behind its competitors in offering experiences outside of its hotels through its loyalty program.
More options are better, and it’s worth giving these a scan. There isn’t the exceptional value, scale, or true scarcity to the bulk of these experiences. But some of them are going to be interesting, and the value per point is fair though not outsized.
VietJet’s CEO became Southeast Asia’s first self-made female billionaire. The airline is a discount carrier flying narrowbody aircraft mostly domestically although with several routes now into Asia.
They’ve branded themselves the bikini airline. And the airline’s CEO sees the campaigns and onboard stunts as empowering. Vietnam has a very conservative culture, and the public bikini stunts rebel against traditional notions of female dress in that society.
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.
At the beginning of the year we learned that American Airlines rolled out a new software program called iSolve to let flight attendants compensate passengers for onboard inconveniences like “inflight entertainment issues, broken seats or meal shortages.”
Four Delta agents in Seattle were fired and were told it’s because they were giving out upgrades.
When flights are oversold in coach but have empty seats in business class, airlines pick out passengers to give ‘operational upgrades’ to. Some airlines will ;prioritize this based on elite status, but that’s not always the case.
Kimber Bermudez is a first grade teacher based in Chicago. She’s been teaching for just two years. Last Tuesday she flew Southwest Airlines to Florida to visit her parents. She was in seat 14C Her seat opponent struck up a conversation with her, asking what she did for a living.
Passengers around her were listening.
Americans generally are against allowing inflight use of cell phones. They don’t want to be trapped listening to their seat opponent yap. However opinion on this may be shifting. A new survey shows that nearly half of Americans want to allow it.
On a mission to recover radioactive materials, two Department of Energy employees from the Idaho National Laboratory drove to San Antonio. Materials had been loaned to a private research lab, and their job was to get it back and transport it security to a government facility.
They brought with them specialized radiation detectors. And to calibrate the detectors they have to bring along some plutonium, too, and also cesium. These are the materials used in nuclear weapons or dirty bombs.
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 »
