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:
Normally you get half an hour in the shower spa, and 5 minutes of water that you can start and top. However if the flight isn’t full and you book your spa midflight instead of just before landing you could presumably take more time. Which appears to be what Logan Paul, the fastest person ever to reach 10 million subscribers on YouTube, did.
He turned the Emirates shower spa into a pop up shop for his clothing brand.
Danny the Deal Guru says that promo code EP1UBERCAR20 is good for $10 off your next Uber ride taken by December 1.
Argentina is said to have detained Air France flight crew who refused to upgrade the daughter of a politician.
Reportedly the daughter of a former Deputy Minister of Justice (and current magistrate) was onboard October 29th Air France flight AF228 from Paris to Buenos Aires. She asked for an upgrade to business class and the crew (correctly) turned her down. She then claimed her seat opponent behaved inappropriately and asked to change seats, which was accommodated (but still not in business class).
American AAdvantage says award availability is going to get better starting later in the year however in the meantime on the whole finding saver award space on American’s own flights is an almost pointless task much of the time.
However they do open space from time to time, in spurts and usually for 24-48 hours at most. When they do you need to grab it, it doesn’t last.
Emirates currently has 10 Boeing 777-200LRs with 8 first class, 42 business class, and 216 economy seats.
They’ve just disclosed a plan to eliminate first class from these planes, and move to a six-across (2-2-2) business class in place of the current seven-across, eliminating the middle-of-middle seat in business. The plane will be densified to 302 seats in total.
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 »
