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.
Cathay Pacific offers inflight internet on its Airbus A350s, but will finally introduce wifi to its Boeing 777s and A330s using Gogo’s high speed 2Ku service. Rollout will begin mid-2018 and is expected to be complete in 2020.
Air Berlin filed bankruptcy on August 15. Their final transatlantic flight caused controversy on October 17th. They shut down completely on October 27.
But they’re reportedly still providing elite status matches.
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.
Southwest Airlines passengers in St. Louis were delayed this morning (and reportedly given $100 vouchers) when one of their pilots was arrested.
Gulf Air was a reasonable way to connect via London, Paris, Frankfurt or Athens on through their Bahrain hub to various destinations in India and Pakistan. They also fly to places tough to get to on European carriers such as Iraq and Sudan.
Meanwhile American hasn’t been adding partners recently. Or benefits. There hasn’t been great news for AAdvantage members in awhile.
Hyatt went without promotions from December 2016 through March 2017. And they only ran one program-wide promotion in 2017, double points for April through June. There’s been no promo for all members and all stays since July 1.
It seemed like they’d go the full second half of the year without a promo even as other chains are leveraging their loyalty programs to put heads in beds. But Hyatt has surprised us.
TIO is the largest bill payment processor for telecommunications, wireless phone, cable and utility payments. They serve 16 million consumer accounts, and work not just with utility providers but they also serve as the backend for several products servicing unbanked customers.
They were acquired by Paypal in July. Paypal suspended the service at the end of last week citing security vulnerabilities they had discovered.
To take advantage of a fare that originates in Europe or the Mideast you don’t need to live there. Redeem a one-way award to get there, by the ticket coming back. It doesn’t always make sense to redeem miles when airfares are cheap. Redeem one way. Buy the other direction.
Or better yet redeem a roundtrip to the region, nest a ticket originating there inside the roundtrip, and you have two trips. And cheap business class fares are the new mileage run.
JD Power is out with their consumer survey on frequent flyer programs and they are ranking programs as follows:
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 »
