There have been many great deals over time, and they never last. The lesson is to take advantage of what’s offered, make use of the benefits, and expect to have to move onto the next offer that comes along.
For all of the many great opportunities that there have been over the past couple of years, probably the greatest ones are even better. The funny thing is that in my frequent flyer youth, I never even knew how great I had it.
Right now there’s the lowest fare available that I’ve seen between the West Coast and Europe in awhile. You can fly San Francisco to London for as little as $263 roundtrip. And it’s not even a basic economy fare, it’s on Icelandair which gives you an advance seat assignment, a carry on bag at no extra charge.
But that’s not all, fares between the US and Europe are available from a variety of cities and on several airlines, each with a Google Flights link that’ll pull up a sample itinerary at the current lowest fare:
American Airlines flight AA1014 from Chicago O’Hare to San Antonio was delayed 47 minutes today. Apparently after arriving in Texas a baboon onboard broke free. It was on the loose but emergency responders stepped into action.
Saudia flight SV3818 from Medina, Saudi Arabia to Dhaka, Bangladesh reached 37,000 feet when the crew diverted to Jeddah. It made a go-around on its first approach because a landing gear hadn’t gone down.
Then the aircraft circled for an hour while it worked through emergency checklists. Ultimately they decided to land without the Airbus A330-200’s nose gear deployed.
A year ago United directed flight attendants to keep a watchful eye over passengers who might ‘steal’ business class bedding.
United’s Polaris soft product does have nice bedding, in fact I don’t know any airline business class whose bedding is clearly better. That’s an amazing statement to make. It would have been hard to imagine two years ago that anyone would have wanted to take a business class pillow or blanket off of a United flight.
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Airline upgrades are almost exclusively done by formula, with little discretion allowed to gate or check-in counter agents.
The only time there may be wiggle room is when a flight is oversold, and while elite frequent flyers may get preference for moving up to a premium cabin, the most important priority is getting a flight out on time. Other than these “operational upgrades” though, upgrades are going to be based on published criteria – not who is nicest, who dresses best, or who asks.
I recently wrote about the workaround for American Airlines’ maddening policy of not allowing customers to through check luggage on separate tickets.
How to pull this off was confusing to several readers so here’s a more specific, detailed explanation.
Premium cabin award space between the West Coast of the US and Europe is much tougher than non-stop space to the East Coast. Folks in the West generally need a domestic connection, then, to reach their international gateway city.
So I thought it was notable enough to pass on non-stop first class award space from several cities out West to Europe.
Booking Qantas first class awards but not being able to find American Airlines space Austin – Dallas to connect to it reminded me that it’s worth reminding you of why this can be a huge headache when you travel (and not just because you have to buy a domestic flight when booking a ticket with miles) — but that there’s also something you can do to get around the hassle.
American Airlines has what I think is the single most consumer-unfriendly policy in travel. They won’t through-check bags on separate tickets.
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 »
