What happens when your cross the worst baggage handlers with the US mail? You get computers stolen from rural school children.
These brain surgeons used a a Ravn truck to move the items they were stealing from the post office to the employee parking lot where they moved goods straight into their cars, and then gave items to family members and co-workers and kept other items in their homes.
In The Gods Must Be Crazy, a tribe which lives off the land believes that the gods have provided for them until a Coke bottle is thrown out of a plane and comes to earth unbroken. They see it as a present from the gods, and make use of it as a tool, but since there’s only one Coke bottle the tribe descends into chaos not knowing how to share it.
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.
Hyatt now counts free night awards towards elite status. But they’re doing more than that. They’re re-calculating 2017 status as though free nights counted last year, and they’re sending out emails to members who would have achieved a higher level of status or earned additional suites and points.
American told flight attendants today that starting in the spring Main Cabin Extra seats with more legroom also get free booze, and overhead bins will have reserved signs.
However that may mean changes soon to limit frequent flyer benefits.
Last night United Airlines President Scott Kirby gave an extended airline economics lecture to investors, explaining how they make more money by building up their hubs. As a result they’re projecting to grow capacity 4% – 6% in 2018 — and continue growing at a similar clip through 2020.
This morning we learned that Delta and American re-started their interline agreement allowing each airline to book seats on the other carrier in the event of irregular operations. It’s limited to this re-accommodation function, but that’s what customers primarily care about and it’s the key item Delta refused to allow in September 2015.
Here’s how that happened.
Until now Uber has insisted that your decision to tip – and how much – cannot affect the rating you’re given by drivers. Drivers have to rate you first before they know what tip decision you’ve made.
Tipping wasn’t even a part of Uber until recently. The idea was ‘the price is the price’ and indeed at the outset they contended that the tip was included. However in their quest to redeem their image, in part by accommodating drivers, Uber added tipping inside the app. At least Uber’s tipping has become cashless.
Two years ago Delta and American eliminated their interline agreement the most basic level of airline cooperation. That’s the agreement necessary to allow flights on the two airlines to exist on the same time, and that’s necessary for one airline to put its distressed passengers on the other carrier — without literally walking over with a credit card to buy a passenger a ticket.
As a general matter I think any airline whose operations are being run by Scott Kirby is going to get worse not better for customers in terms of passenger experience. At the same time there’s no one in the industry I’d rather listen to because he’s earnest and thoughtful and lays out more clearly than anyone else his belief about how his business, and the broader industry, works.
He walked through airline economics, United’s positioning, and marginal analysis with a primary goal of convincing investors it is okay for United to grow.
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 »
