Delta owns 49% of Virgin Atlantic. Now Air France KLM is going to acquire Virgin Group’s 31% stake in the carrier. So Virgin Atlantic will be 80% owned by joint venture partners Delta and Air France.
But that’s not where it gets complicated.
Earlier tonight I wrote about a ridiculous deal offering up to 150,000 miles in the Gol Smiles program for even a one night hotel stay that cost $600 or so.
You’re going to want to familiarize yourself with this program because they’re running a promotion that is insane and off the charts: hotel bookings for miles worth far more than the hotel nights themselves.
Alaska Airlines has launched 20 new routes in the last 9 months, and says 15 are already profitable. They’re planning 30 new routes in the next 6 months.
In August 2015 American ported in the US Airways baggage tracking feature so customers could see the status of bags in real time.
American has now rolled out what they call Customer Baggage Notification.
It was only 3 years ago that Hilton moved from generally allowing same day cancellation of hotel reservations to requiring cancellation the day before to avoid charges.
It’s always awkward to fly in a different class of service than other people in your party.
Etihad posted a loss of $1.87 billion for 2016. Yet carrying passengers on the airline (so excluding special items) they actually made money.
All three major Gulf carriers are struggling.
A month ago the US declared that not only wouldn’t they extend the ban on electronics larger than a standard cell phone to European flights, but they’d remove it from flights coming from Mideast airports, provided each airport around the world changed its security procedures to U.S. specifications.
Supposedly there’s a concrete plot to blow up planes with electronics and that’s the top secret information President Trump disclosed to Russians in the Oval Office.
American Express has updated credit card application terms for their Delta card with a warning to customers who would just sign for a card, pocket the bonus, and cancel.
This underscores that American Express is paying attention to their costs as they invest heavily in their products. They’re happy to spend significantly to acquire customers, but want to limit the number of unprofitable customers they’re bringing in at the same time.
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 »
