The Christmas Day departure of British Airways subsidiary OpenSkies flight BA8004 from Newark to Paris diverted to Shannon, Ireland for a bathroom break.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
When transfers from Starwood to Virgin America briefly disappeared from the Starwood website a week ago it looked like a change without notice, the elimination of a partnership driven by Alaska’s acquisition of Virgin America. After all, it was separately announced that Citibank would lose the ability to transfer points to Virgin America as well.
Fortunately the ability to transfer points to Virgin America return to SPG.com and always remained available by phone. It shouldn’t surprise anyone, of course, that Starwood’s partnership with Virgin America is ending however.
IHG Rewards Club has posted a .pdf of hotels that will be changing rewards redemption category on January 15.
About 650 hotels are changing category. Of those, about 75% are going to cost more points to redeem starting January 15th. Two-thirds of the hotels that are changing category are in the U.S. Over 90% of those are going up in category and price.
On Christmas Eve, American’s flight from Dallas to Buenos Aires ran into trouble on final approach. As it prepared to land in Buenos Aires, weather forced it to divert to Montevideo.
Turbulence was so bad as the plane tried to land in Buenos Aires initially that perhaps half the passengers on the plane threw up and the aircraft ran out of airsickness bags. And there was reporedly a lightning strike as well.
Here’s a $20 credit that you can add to your Uber account and which should be valid through the end of February.
My last flight of the year unexpectedly ended up as a delayed Houston – Austin flight on United. It was a short hop, and wound up being one of the most fun domestic flights I had all year.
When my wife and I were first dating she had a business trip to San Francisco. I confirmed her upgrade on United even though she hadn’t given me the flight number or record locator.
I knew the route she’d be flying, and when she got back, so it was easy to pull up her flight details and get her reservation changed. I used miles — United only charged 10,000 miles back then and no cash co-pay — rather than a confirmed upgrade certificate because those certificates were paper back then and I wanted to surprise her (not hand her a certificate and explain what I was doing).
She told me later that she had to decide whether she thought it was sweet and awesome — or creepy — that I’d altered her reservation without telling her.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Jet Airways flight 2374 from Goa to Mumbai skidded after aborting takeoff and made a 360 degree turn.
Injuries were minor and everyone is ‘safe’.
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 »
