Jan 27 2017

American Airlines spoke several times in its quarterly earnings call about its new Basic Economy fares that it will begin offering shortly.

They say that “basic and premium economy combined” will be worth more than $1 billion in incremental revenue to the airline, that they’ll get 20% of the way there this year and 80% next year. They don’t split up their projections across the two, and they haven’t even begun selling either (let alone retrofitting international widebodies to sell premium economy). But those numbers are insane.

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Jan 27 2017

Supposedly the TSA is going to stop sending people through PreCheck who haven’t registered for PreCheck (or one of the other programs that comes with PreCheck).

They’ve said this before — an end to one “managed inclusion” program, but a continuation of another. The TSA has sent ‘Behavior Detection Officers’ to pick people out of line for expedited screening. These staffers have had a short course in mind reading pretending to be Israeli reading body language to pick out who is a threat and who isn’t, but there’s no indication that the training is effective or that the employees are any good at it.

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Jan 27 2017

In the aftermath of a Mumbai – Newark flight last month where a man self-downgraded from business to a center section seat in economy so he could grope a woman (and in the aftermath of the controversy over whether first class armrests used to move) Air India plans to reserve six seats at the front of economy for women only.

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Jan 26 2017

Wine matters in premium cabins, mostly in my opinion for branding reasons. Qantas is the third largest buyer of Australian wine. Emirates is said to have spent $500 million acquiring wine for its flights.

Wine certainly can taste very different in the air than on the ground. Champagne often works well onboard, and I tend to favor it over even better old world wines.

Most people don’t know very much about wine (I suspect that the average premium cabin customer is like my seatmate who brought her own wine in a coffee cup onboard), though they think of it as a luxury good. Delta’s wine program recognizes this specifically avoiding bottles that are priced too inexpensively at retail (lest people think they’re low quality, regardless of taste) and that have too unsophisticated a label.

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Jan 26 2017

Back in September Lufthansa became the 19th airline set up with TSA PreCheck. By joining Air Canada, Etihad, Aeromexico and WestJet, what was once US airlines only — and not even all of them at that — the massive US data-sharing, surveillance and passenger-convenience program had gone global.

The TSA’s website still lists only 19 airlines however they’ve just announced the addition of 11 more airlines including Spirit, Virgin Atlantic, Emirates and Avianca.

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Jan 26 2017

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.

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Jan 26 2017

The best way to get an airfare deal is to research and learn what tickets on your route usually cost and watch pricing, and buy when the cost is lower than normal.

The trick to this is to be looking far enough in advance that a sale is more likely than the price creeping up. Close to departure prices are more likely to go up than down, as tickets sell out on full planes.

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Jan 26 2017

American’s award chart prices increased quite a bit last March. Prices went up astronomically for international first class awards to many destinations.

As a result, many people booked award trips in first class far off into the future, figuring that they could change the dates later. The idea was to lock in the price by issuing tickets prior to March 22 of last year, and then change the award as-needed.

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Jan 25 2017

The Los Angeles Times is reporting on a draft executive order that would suspend the US Visa Waiver program.

Citizens of 38 countries apply online for entry to the US for up to 90 days. The ESTA is in lieu of a formal visa, which requires an interview. Suspending this program would require visitors to the US to obtain the formal visa instead, scheduling US embassy interviews.

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Jan 25 2017

Starting February 1 Hilton will offer 2000 bonus points per night with no minimum stays and no limits for which nights of the week.

I value Hilton points at $0.004 per point, which makes 2000 points worth $8 per night. That’s not a lot, but it’s a bonus on top of your regular earning and in percentage terms it can be a large rebate on the least expensive room rates. It’s sort of the “anti-revenue based promotion.”

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