Recently American Express stopped processing payments with Plastiq. They suggested this was temporary, I’m surprised by how temporary it was, since they’re back processing American Express cards for payments again. Note though that they don’t take Amex for everything — notably mortgage payments.
Last Wednesday details were announced for the new Uber Visa from Barclaycard. Applications are now live.
The card offers 4% back on restaurants. It has a $100 signup bonus. There’s cell phone protection and a rebate on Netflix or Spotify. It’s an interesting no fee card with no foreign transaction fees but it’s missing premium benefits from Uber.
On Thursday in Singapore the airline unveiled their new business class seat for the Airbus A380, going into their five new aircraft and retrofitting their other 14 remaining A380s through 2020. I attended the unveiling.
The seat reclines flat, meaning it will also be possible to sit in a reclining and relaxing position, so it’s good as a seat and not just for sleeping. And the divider between middle seats goes all the way down to create a double bed and indeed a cocoon for two people traveling together.
Singapore Airlines unveiled new cabin products at a presentation in Singapore in Thursday. I poked around the new seats and also took video.
All in all I love the style of the new Suites. They’re large, they’re gorgeous, incredibly sleek and sexy. Singapore goes from having one of the top first class products in the sky with their current A380 to something much better.
Listeria was found at Gate Gourmet at LAX, and American has suspended provisioning catering from the facility. Delta and several international airlines also use Gate Gourmet at LAX but have not taken a similar step.
For the last few years American Airlines has focused like a laser on “D0” — departing exactly on time.
They believe that the number one thing they can do to make sure flights arrive on time is to make sure they depart on time. Departures are more controllable than arrivals. After all government completely controls the air space between airports.
I don’t think American’s domestic meal service is very good. In fact that’s an understatement. I don’t think United’s is very good, but American’s is worse.
One area where US airlines are consistently bad across the board is breakfast.
American claims to be still redeeming just as many upgrades as before — just no longer at booking.
This means they’re providing a worse customer experience but the same number of seats are going to upgrades rather than selling more seats. They’re reducing the value of AAdvantage miles and elite upgrades without getting a revenue benefit in return. Smart.
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.
The sibylline Brian Sumers tweets a oneworld slide claiming that data supports the claim they’re the preferred alliance of customers who spend the most money. When all it really says is that oneworld has a presence in high yield cities but since they’re smaller than Star Alliance they don’t have as big a presence in lower yield cities also.
The real takeaway from the data, though, are which cities have the biggest concentrations of premium cabin customers.
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 »
