United reportedly locked the World’s Biggest Rabbit in a freezer for hours and them cremated it without permission. They shoved a 71 year old man to the ground and threatened to take all his miles. And that doesn’t even get us to David Dao. Yet they’re still making money.
United seems to be learning that customers really want the abuse.
Make no mistake, if Delta, American, and United get the Administration to abrogate its Open Skies treaty obligations and limit flights by Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar it’s because Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn is sidelined. They’ll have won because of Cohn’s pushback over the President’s statements after Charlottesville.
Most of the time I’ve seen buy ups from Basic Economy to regular economy for $25 or so, or more on longer routes. But Tuesday night reader W. shared New York LaGuardia – Denver asking different buy up amounts for different flights — as much as $75 more one way.
There’s no way I would pay $75 more to avoid Basic Economy though I might pay the same or a little more to avoid United in this case.
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British Airways tea service isn’t as extensive as tea at the Burj al Arab in Dubai but it’s a staple of the British carrier.
At least it used to be.
Even though air berlin’s frequent flyer program had been spun off as a separate company, largely as a mechanism to provide the airline with additional cash and for Etihad to exercise additional control in spite of foreign ownership limits over the carrier itself, the loyalty program was forced to suspend mileage earning and redemption.
Now the airline’s topbonus frequent flyer program has itself declared insolvency.
VietJet learned “from its experience with the opening of a route to Malaysia” that you can’t staff planes with bikini-clad flight attendants to all destinations.
The airline’s ability to fly to Jakarta, Indonesia has been contingent on two things: “halal food for Muslim passengers” and that flight attendants can’t wear bikinis.
American Airlines reached out to tell me that one of their published policies doesn’t mean what it says. Even though American’s travel waivers say that Basic Economy customers can only be rebooked onto flights that have Basic Economy inventory available, American tells me that isn’t true.
In fact, it’s partly true but there’s an unpublished exception.
Tuesday afternoon’s United flight UA1997 from Chicago O’Hare to Newark was delayed until Wednesday as a result of mid-Atlantic thunderstorms, returning to the gate, a maintenance issue and deplaning twice — and the crew exceeding their maximum allowable duty time..
And that’s even before the Captain gives passengers a sense of danger that a flight attendant has to walk back.
JetBlue is having an award sale, 25% off the required number of points for awards booked by Saturday for travel between September 6 and November 7.
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 »
