What if a legacy carrier could take low cost carrier competition and – as Grover Norquist once said — “drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub?”
British Airways parent IAG has acquired a 4.61% stake in Norwegian and plans to initiate acquisition discussions. Of course IAG says they view Norwegian as ‘an attractive investment’. At this point almost no one views Norwegian as an attractive investment.
A new research paper out of the University of Virginia suggests that airlines are talking about ‘capacity discipline’ in earnings calls to signal to other airlines a willingness to reduce capacity. When they do that, capacity falls. And that’s a form of collusion out in the open.
Steve Wynn has exited stage left from Wynn Resorts amid sexual misconduct allegations. The hotel chain, which earns the bulk of its profits in Macau, is considered an acquisition target.
But the pending opening of its new $2.5 billion Boston Harbor property, slated for next year, is now in jeopardy. Just last week a constructor worker died on site. And now its gambling license may be at risk.
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.
In my view United has been exceptionally slow to roll out their new business class Polaris seats. It’s been nearly two years since they announced the product. It’s been fourteen months since the product took flight.
And while new widebody aircraft deliveries have had it, they’ve put only 5 reconfigured planes into service so far.
225 flights were delayed and 18 cancelled at the Fort Lauderdale airport were delayed yesterday when a tornado touched down on the northwest part of the airport.
The tornado shut down a runway around 4:30 p.m. and “blew luggage trolleys into the airfield.” Here’s video.
In the fall Cathay Pacific announced that their Boeing 777s and Airbus A330s would be getting high speed internet. It turns out the retrofit of 777s also includes adding seats to coach. Cathay is going 10-abreast with slim seats in economy.
The officer says he did nothing wrong but that “if he did do something wrong it was because the City of Chicago failed to properly train him.”
And if United hadn’t called him, he wouldn’t have been there, Dr. Dao wouldn’t have been beaten and he wouldn’t have been fired.
There are several Hilton properties offering suites, premium suites, or club lounge access rooms for the points price of a basic award room — even among the best properties.
I posted on April 1 that Delta reduced the price of partner awards to Asia. And it wasn’t even April Fools’ Day. In fact I asked Delta and they confirmed this was not a mistake. Now it appears that they’ve lowered the price of partner awards to Europe, too.
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 »
