Watch Out for a New $50 Fee on Your Next Hotel Reservation

by Gary Leff

Nov 26 2015

Hilton is testing a $50 fee for cancelling cancellable reservations.

Skift attributes this to a stronger position on the part of hotels with high occupancy rates, suggesting that “a seller’s market provides hotel owners with a greater freedom to dictate contract terms, including cancellations.”

Hilton’s CEO suggests it’s about hotels lowering rates closer-in, and customers who booked higher rates cancelling and rebooking. He considers that type of perfectly reasonable behavior (wanting to pay less when a hotel will charge less) “gaming.”

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Airbus Thinks Putting Passengers in Shipping Containers Would Help Airlines Board Faster

by Gary Leff

Nov 26 2015

Airbus filed for a new patent in 2013 and which was approved this week: “…Airbus [is] reconsidering the boarding process with an idea to turn aircraft cabins into what amount to shipping containers.”

Passengers would board a module at the gate. Everyone sits down. The module would be lowered into the plane once it arrives. Then when the plane makes it to its destination, the cabin module would be removed and swapped out for new passengers in their own module. And the plane goes on its way.

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Man Threatened With Ejection from Flight for Being Too Fat Solves Problem in Unconventional Way

by Gary Leff

Nov 26 2015

Last Friday an American Airlines passenger preparing to depart Dallas Fort-Worth for Orange County was asked to leave the plane “for being too big.” He’s 6 feet tall, 260 pounds, which seems like a weight and height of a person who flies every day without incident.

He was seated in a middle seat, and the woman sitting in the aisle got up and walked to the front, spoke to a flight attendant, and that’s when cabin crew approached to eject him from the aircraft.

The strange thing is the situation was resolved when he agreed to switch seats, giving up his middle seat and taking the complaining woman’s aisle instead.

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American Express Centurion Lounge Coming to Chicago O’Hare Soon?

by Gary Leff

Nov 25 2015

Earlier in the month an alert reader spotted a popup American Express Centurion lounge display at LAX. That turned out to foretell a coming Centurion Lounge at the airport, at least according to an LAX employee newsletter.

Alert reader @tarheeljason tweeted me about an even more extensive popup at Chicago O’Hare. So I went to American Express to find out what’s going on.

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Air Canada Introduces the Toughest Spending Requirement for Elite Status

by Gary Leff

Nov 25 2015

Three years ago Delta introduced minimum spending requirements for elite status. The revenue requirement was essentially set at 10 cents per mile — e.g. $2500 for 25,000 mile status, $5000 for 50,000 mile status and so on. That was a big conceptual move, but one with limited effect in practice.

However revenue-based requirements for elite status have now spread internationally — to North of the Border. Air Canada is clearly trying to cull their elite ranks, something consistent with their past stated attitudes towards elite frequent flyers.

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A Cautionary Tale About Booking Through Expedia

by Gary Leff

Nov 24 2015

Rick Hasen, a law school contracts professor who runs an election law blog, writes about an Alice in Wonderland experience with Expedia.

He purchased non-changeable tickets that Expedia said had a change fee. The tickets didn’t permit advance seat assignments which Expedia failed to disclose. And Expedia says he should have called them during the purchase process to find out if there were any hidden restrictions — a phone call that likely would have taken hours.

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