The Best Thing About Each Travel Provider

May 02 2017

This is a lightning round, I’m going to give one quick thing that overwhelms everything else and I’m not going to offer a detailed explanation — just a simple statement of the one best thing about an airline, a hotel chain, or a rental car company.

These choices are, of course, influenced by my idiosyncratic preferences — but I think they stand up:

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American Says They Won’t Sell the AAdvantage Program

american airlines plane
May 02 2017

American Airlines first quarter earnings fell year-over-year by about three-fifths, down to $234 million. It’s fair to say that despite disappointing credit card signups impacting revenue forecasts in Q1 the AAdvantage program really did earn the bulk of the airline’s profits.

Indeed, though they do not break out numbers this way, it’s possible that in the first quarter AAdvantage earned all of the airline’s profit and without selling miles the airline itself would have operated at a loss. And that’s even before unilaterally announcing employee raises which financial analysts grilled the airline over.

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