Qantas is launching a new route on September 1, 2018: San Francisco – Melbourne on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, operated by a Boeing 787-9.
Qantas rarely makes business class award space available, however on this new flight awards are wide open on the days of the week it operates. Some flights have as many as 6 business class award seats available.
Two weeks ago Hyatt was pricing several hotels below their normal published cash and points award prices. Then at the beginning of the week more hotels were identified offering an unpublished award sale.
Now premium rooms and suites on sale, some standard reward nights and others cash and points.
American is offering “52 new nonstop flights and enhanced schedules” in its 2018 schedule Only 8 are actually newly announced today. Like United, American Airlines is beefing up service to smaller markets where there’s less competition from ultra low cost carriers like Spirit and Frontier, and consequently less fare pressure.
In addition starting April 4 Chicago – New York LaGuardia is being upgraded to a ‘shuttle’ product along the lines of New York LaGuardia – DC and Boston
United is telling its employees that it will launch a premium economy cabin called ‘Premium Plus’ later this year.
Here they follow American and Delta which have both started offering the international cabin between economy and business class, similar to domestic first class.
United failed to open a single Polaris business class lounge in 2017. As American opened four of its own business lounges between June and December, United was left only with its first Chicago outpost.
At the end of the year the airline even removed the timetable for Polaris lounge openings.
When Hyatt hired Mark Vondrasek – formerly of Starwood – as Senior Vice President for loyalty and business platforms it was announced he would circumvent the CMO and report directly to the CEO. At the time I noted how unique that was.
Though Hyatt tried to dissuade me of the significance that their head of loyalty wouldn’t report to the Chief Marketing Officer the handwriting seemed to be there.
Pilots aren’t supposed to let attractive passengers join them up front. Even when the passenger is a porn star. Or a Playboy Bunny. They’re supposed to fly the plane not film flight attendants having sex, look at porn in the cockpit, or check Facebook. Let alone this.
But what they do on the ground when not in class doesn’t concern me so much. As long as they pay attention in the cockpits of Aeroflot and S7 this doesn’t bother me.
Etihad has been on a crash course lately to stop the bleeding from unprofitable airline investments, cut costs, and monetize premium services where they can.
Now they’re selling Residence lounge access at New York JFK even though Etihad offers double-daily A380 service between New York and Abu Dhabi.
This week was the anniversary of the US Airways 1549 ‘Miracle on the Hudson’. When imagining a plane full of passengers bracing for impact it’s hard not to think about the scene inside that plane from Sully whose dramatization of that flight made the entire movie.
Yesterday an American Airlines flight from Phoenix to Dallas Fort-Worth operated by a Mesa CRJ-900 made an emergency landing and video from inside the cabin of passengers being told to brace and preparing to evacuate is incredible.
Airbus has been telling anyone that would listen that if Emirates didn’t place a new A380 order they’d shut down the program. The plane would enter a death spiral. Without an ongoing program for the aircraft, the value of the Emirates fleet would drop and replacement parts for the aircraft would become harder to get.
Emirates placed an order for 36 more Airbus A380s adding to the 101 currently in their fleet and the 41 already on order. That will bring their total A380 fleet to 178 — if they take delivery of all the aircraft.
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 »
