Alaska Airlines is offering a 40% bonus on purchased miles through July 13.
Alaska Airlines allows a free stopover on each one way award. And they have some of the best redemption prices of any program.
Starwood is offering a 35% discount on buying Starpoints through July 20. They’re actually letting you buy points at a price which those points are worth which is great.
Technically Starwood Preferred Guest will still exists August 1, but that’s a legal distinction. Marriott, Starwood, and Ritz-Carlton will all have the same program at this point just with different names because contractual issues prevent them from calling it one program. For all intents and purposes though this is the last sale of Starpoints qua Starpoints.
Sleeping in airports is a time-honored tradition. It happens regularly during major storms, when flights are cancelled and airlines aren’t giving out hotel vouchers or nearby hotels are booked solid. Airports sometimes bring in cots.
Passengers with long layovers after an overnight flight may lay down in a quiet spot on the floor, too. There’s even a guide to sleeping in airports.
On Thursday a Bravo Air MD-83 left Antalya, Turkey bound for Kiev, Ukraine. There were 169 passengers and 6 crew on board. On arrival the aircraft landed but veered off the runway before coming to a stop.
A passenger was videotaping the landing from inside the cabin. At 22 seconds you can hear clapping after touchdown, but at 37 seconds you can hear in turn to screams. It’s incredibly eerie.
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.
There’s no question that immigration and customs develops a different culture and reputation at different airports in the U.S. While you’d hope they would apply standards and procedures from their handbook uniformly, there’s a difference between de facto practice and de jure rules.
People learn procedures by watching other people, and by discussing how to go about doing their jobs with colleagues. In other words, customs and immigration procedures are carried out by people.
On Friday’s Singapore Airlines flight SQ516 from Singapore to Kolkata, India was delayed four hours due to non-working air conditioning onboard. But apparently crew didn’t keep passengers informed about what was wrong or what it looked like to fix the aircraft.
There weren’t any refreshments served during the delay that stretched as long as the block time for this four-times weekly Airbus A330. Allegedly sick passengers were refused water.
Three years ago the Department of Justice announced that they were investigating the US airlines for unlawful collusion to limit capacity and increase airfares.
DOJ walking away from its case didn’t end matters. There’s still a private lawsuit. It argues that the major US airlines colluded to restrict capacity through their public statements calling for capacity discipline.
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 the days following the David Dao passenger beating incident onboard a United Express plane, the airline’s CEO was chided for bicycle riding in front of his $6 million Florida mansion. Now that mansion has him in trouble in a different way.
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 »
