On Sunday I wrote that Lufthansa first class awards had become bookable using partner miles. That’s significant because normally Lufthansa only makes first class award space available in advance to its own Miles & More members. Star Alliance partner frequent flyer programs can generally only book that space within 2 weeks of departure.
Now this has spread to San Francisco – Munich.
British Airways doesn’t have a competitive business class product. On their Boeing 777s seating is eight across, middle seats are especially intimate and passengers in the window climb over the feet of their seat opponents.
BA’s CEO suggests any new business class seat would need to take up more room, and that room would come at the expense of first class.
A woman with multiple sclerosis makes an annual trip to Europe with her husband, generally flying Delta which provides her “with a wheelchair that has straps to help her sit up straight.”
Only for her trip earlier this month from Atlanta to Amsterdam the woman says that Delta did not make that wheelchair available to her, so they “tied her to [a different type of] wheelchair with a “dirty blanket,” bruising her in the process.
Hyatt has a little over 600 hotels. That’s one-tenth the size of Marriott. There’s Marriott, Hilton, IHG, and Accor as players and there just aren’t chains in Hyatt’s peer group anymore.
They did try to buy Starwood themselves but their complex stock structure (two tiered stock giving outsized control to the Pritzker family) was a stopper and Marriott bested them. They tried to buy Kimpton but IHG was willing to pay far more.
There’s less than you can buy at the airport than you might think, I wish there were full pharmacies at major US airports like there are in some other places in the world, plus grocery stores – I could pick up dinner conveniently on the way home – and maybe a dry cleaner I could use on my way in and out of town.
One airport is getting a medical clinic. And even its name tells you it’s for passengers on legacy US Airways planes.
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.
It seems to me that airlines ought to refuse to transport customers who act uncivilly towards employees, and – union rules notwithstanding – should fire employees who act uncivilly towards customers. It also seems that law enforcement should be a last resort, not a first resort.
The Dallas Fort Worth A Terminal Admirals Club has been renovated, and I’m not sure it’s better than it used to be. Of course I think that was the one Admirals Club in the system that needed renovations the least in my opinion.
Not everyone agrees with me, because one employee kept walking through the lounge talking aloud to himself and engaging customers marveling at how nice he believes it is.
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.
One of the aspects of Marriott’s announced new program that seems to annoy Starwood’s most loyal customers the most isn’t even where something is being taken away from them.
Under the new program all current lifetime elites keep their current lifetime status, even though the new program is going to have tougher requirements than the Starwood program did to earn that status.
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 »
