The top 6 credit card issuers handle 61% of credit card purchase volume.
Chase is the market leader by a wide margin. American Express and Citibank traded places after Citibank took the Costco co-brand card from Amex, which had been American Express’ largest cobrand deal and substantially larger than Delta at number two (Starwood is number three).
ast week Chase’s CEO slammed bitcoin. He’s “skeptical authorities will allow a currency to exist without state oversight.”
Dimon said he’d fire anyone who traded bitcoin.
Delta is largely eliminating its Tokyo Narita hub in favor of non-stop flights between the US and Asia and connections over Seoul via a joint venture with Korean Air.
Towards that end Delta will be eliminating service to Guam, which it flies to via Narita, with its last flight January 8.
Bank of America has entered the premium rewards credit card market (or that’s what they want you to think) and they’ve come up with a name for the product to emphasize this: Bank of America Premium Rewards Credit Card.
Zodiac Aerospace created what for a long time was the best business class seat in the world, the Cirrus seat which was a reverse herringbone fully flat bed with direct aisle access. Airlines from US Airways to Cathay Pacific, American (on the 777-300ER), EVA Air and Air France made great use of the product.
The seat maker’s biggest challenge in recent years has been delivering product on time.
Marriott will give you 1000 points for answering a simple question on Twitter. Points post instantly. Here’s the answer.
You can fly from Sydney to Los Angeles for under US$1000 roundtrip on Air New Zealand (connecting in Auckland).
You do need to originate in Australia. Roundtrips starting in the U.S. don’t price this way.
Emirates has closed its lounge at New York JFK for renovations and won’t re-open until “early 2018” though in my experience most airport construction projects delay. In the meantime anyone who would have received lounge access gets a voucher to use for food in the terminal.
Equifax blew it, though theirs is hardly the first hack. Personal data isn’t safe, and that should make us skeptical of centralized databases of personal information regardless of who collects it. Indeed, the entire system of using social security numbers of personal identifiers has been broken.
We’re stuck dealing with the consequences, and while the average consumer maybe should get a credit freeze I’m not going to, it’s a pain and slows down the credit origination process and not all issuers will follow up manually to get permission to access your credit.
Mike Helms caught a glimpse of another moment of honor that’s both special and far more somber last week as everyone on a Delta flight remains seated on arrival in Oklahoma City while the body of a fallen soldier is taken off the plane and returned to her waiting family.
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 »
