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.
Delta is running an award redemption flash sale to Hawaii.
They’re advertising it as ‘from’ 35,000 miles roundtrip in economy, but that’s very limited routes like Seattle – Lihue, and in many ways this sale just underscores how bad a deal regular SkyMiles is. Here’s how to do Hawaii better.
The airline has said they expect the San Francisco, Newark, Houston and Los Angeles lounges to open this year — with the first three this summer.
And they’ve apparently learned their lesson with the Polaris debacle of overpromising and underdelivering seats and lounges, because it looks like they’re going to beat the summer opening projection for San Francisco — by a lot.
Last month I wrote that I am not a fan of hotel toiletries coming out of wall mounted dispensers in the shower. They aren’t as clean and they don’t always get refilled. And of course you can’t take the toiletries with you!
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 »
