Southwest is giving every employee $1000, giving an additional $5 million to charity and exercising options for 40 Boeing 737 MAX 8 (“15 firm orders in 2019 and 25 firm orders in 2020”). They’re crediting the tax reform bill for the moves.
American Airlines is also giving each employee $1000. It’ll cost American Airlines about $130 million or almost twice what it will cost Southwest because of American’s size. American also credits the tax reform bill.
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.
American Express Membership Rewards points have historically transferred to Hilton at a rate of 1000 -> 1500. So 1 Amex point was worth 1.5 Hilton points.
That’s not a rate I’d want to transfer at. I value Hilton points at 4/10ths of a cent and Amex points at 1.8 cents apiece. Sometimes they’d run bonuses where 1 Amex point would yield 2 Hilton, still not a great deal but better of course.
New higher-priced top redemption category, hotels can cost up to 70,000 points per night rather than 60,000.
499 hotels go up in category (cost more points to redeem) while 192 go down, more than a 2.5 to 1 ratio of increases to decreases. Most of the increases are in the U.S.
Commercial air safety has consistently improved for the past 35 years, but Trump has been in office just one year.
Oddly though his primary air travel safety initiative — spinning off air traffic control into an independent non-profit corporation, separating out regulation from the actual provision of air traffic services, an ICAO best practice the US currently fails to follow — failed to gain traction in 2017.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle flew British Airways BA346 from London Heathrow to Nice on Sunday. Along with three bodyguards they took up the last three rows of coach “next to the toilets.”
British Airways cuts have effectively destroyed its brand. What was once viewed as a quality international carrier is largely to be avoided when possible.
Here’s a leak of just how British Airways will cram more seats into short haul planes flying in and out of London Heathrow.
While the Waldorf=Astoria Boca Raton Resort and Club isn’t really my personal style (I’ve never been a big fan of The Breakers, either) it certainly receives its share of plaudits and pulls high room rates in-season.
Since the YouTube video went up last night over 650 one star reviews of this property have been posted to Yelp. It’s overall Yelp rating has dropped down to 1.5 stars.
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.
A year ago the Hilton San Francisco Union Square double charged guests checking out on a single day. A few days later they corrected the problem by double-refunding guest credit cards. So those guests weren’t charged for their stay.
These two countervailing errors, generating four credit card transactions, sat for a year. Then a full year later Hilton charged everyone’s cards again.
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 »
