The Southwest Companion Pass is the best deal in travel for many. But with the New Year there’s a change in what points count towards earning one.
With the major airlines devaluing their programs, I’m finding Southwest more attractive. And of course checked bags are free.
A trend in upscale hotels is to embrace the local community, and make this a selling point to guests — to participate in farmers markets, bring in local artists, and become the ‘passport to experience’ a location ‘indigenously’.
The Westin Austin Downtown is a new build hotel in the heart of Austin’s music scene. Instead of celebrating the music, they’re suing over the noise.
A Canadian Boeing 737 pilot for Sunwing Airlines was found passed out in the cockpit yesterday morning. Gate and flight crew reported “he was behaving strangely.” His reported blood alcohol level was .24.
I’m always skeptical of details reported in the media about aviation-related incidents. Here there’s reporting of the route that the flight was supposed to be taking for the day:
A video went viral this week of passengers being removed from a Delta flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. The flight returned to Minneapolis where it was met by police. Passengers cheers as a man and woman were led off the aircraft.
Apparently the woman needed to use the lavatory shortly after takeoff. She got up, but a flight attendant spoke up — we don’t know exactly what was said. The woman and her travel companion escalated things to the point where the pilot decided to set the aircraft back down at its point of origin.
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.
Plaza Premium airport lounges are found in airports all over the world. Airlines often contract with them for lounge access, so business class and sometimes elite passengers are welcomed. And you can access many of the lounges with a Priority Pass card which comes bundled with many US premium credit cards.
And Plaza Premium has a loyalty program where you earn points for lounge visits — even when those lounge visits don’t cost you anything.
Etihad is one of the top airlines in the world for passenger experience. They offer a great connecting point in Abu Dhabi for travel to India and the surrounding region. I’ve used them to travel there as well as to the Maldives and also back from Sri Lanka.
But they also have a strong frequent flyer program of their own, and they are a transfer partner of Citi ThankYou Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards.
N757AF is Donald Trump’s Boeing 757. Here’s the plane receiving a water cannon salute.
The president director and operational director of SkyTeam member Garuda Indonesia’s low cost carrier Citilink have resigned after video surfaced of one of their pilots stumbling through airport security.
No one stopped him. Security staff have to help him gather his belongings because he couldn’t manage to balance them himself.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere, in a since-deleted tweet, declared to his 3.5 million followers that lack of a full room service menu overnight at the W Hoboken is ‘cray’.
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 »
