This week Swiss made first class award space broadly available. Usually Swiss first class awards are offered only to Miles & More elite members, but a couple of times recently they’ve opened these seats to partner members who have had no issues with their bookings or travel.
However this time it appears reservations have been cancelled.
Yesterday American Airlines announced that they had worked things out with their pilots union and there would be no cancellations at Christmas as a result of failing to schedule people to fly.
The work out is to pay pilots double instead of time and a half.
Although there are standards and templates, each Star Alliance partner negotiates bilaterally with every other partner over mileage credit and redemption prices.
Non-alliance partners, of course, do as well. And those re-negotiations can stall.
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 seems no stranger to the idea of elaborate schemes to simultaneously present a premium product on the one hand while limiting investment in it on the other. So I say Flagship Dining lasts as long as the United Polaris lounge concept grows and continues to offer sit down dining — something that appears by no means assured.
Congressman Blake Farenthold from Corpus Christi, Texas posted as farenthold on Flyertalk. The
‘last activity’ in his profile shows he continued to check the site while a Member of Congress.
I did meet Congressman Farenthold once, at the inaugural EVA Air “Hello Kitty” flight to Houston. From his posts online, it’s not much of a surprise he’s caught up as the latest Member of Congress in sexual harassment allegations.
TSA sought additional providers in 2016 to help expand PreCheck but Morpho Trust filed a bid protest (they were selected as one provider but not the sole provider) and then they sued. The agency gave up.
However Morpho’s sole source contract expires in September 2018. And TSA is re-opening competition for “what it calls Universal Enrollment Services (including PreCheck).”
there’s now something new to add to the ‘avoid’ list: flights operated by American Airlines’ Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft. So far they only have two of these planes. MAXs will be based out of Miami however not exclusively. They’ve ordered a total of 100.
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.
Last night Delta began charging 86,000 miles each way for business class awards between the US and Europe on Delta’s own planes. What’s bizarre — aside from the 23% no notice increase — is that it meant Delta flights were more expensive (by 1000 miles) than flights on partners.
They’ve already rolled back this change.
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 »
