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.
A long-time reader shared their experience flying Delta this past weekend from Dallas to Detroit. They’re a Diamond Medallion member, and they were flying on a paid first class ticket. When they boarded the narrowbody jet, they discovered that their seat had no tray table. It was missing, “so I can’t eat, drink or do work with my computer.”
Bilt Rewards has a new program that rewards you with 1 point per $2 spent on the purchase price of a home, for working with a real estate agent they refer you to.
This is all wrapped with first-time homebuying tools like mortgage, down payment, property tax and insurance cost calculators that help educate members. Their tool integrates the affordability calculators with real estate search.
A United Airlines passenger, reportedly on a flight from Austin to Los Angeles, had a meltdown the likes of which I hadn’t seen before. He attacked his own seat on the Airbus A320.
An important thing to know is that if you buzz because you’re boarding before your group is called, the gate agent can clear the flag on their screen and allow you to board. If you’re traveling with a family member or friend on a different reservation, for instance, it is actually policy according to the airline that you should still be allowed to board together in the earlier group.
With Alaska eliminating check-in kiosks and telling customers to print their bag tags at home, these would be a great step towards the future – if they could get the cost down (or subsidize them for regular flyers).
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.
Delta’s Investor Day was held this morning, and a key theme of airline President Glen Hauenstein’s presentation was getting passengers to pay more for their seats.
There were three ways he outlined that Delta is and plans to drive more revenue from passengers out of each seat that they fly – reducing upgrades, stripping down their Comfort+ and business class products to get customers to pay extra for the services than they’re used to, and using AI to figure out the most each passenger is willing to pay at the time they search for fares.
Aer Lingus is an oddball airline. Geographically Ireland is well-placed for connections between the U.S. and Europe, in addition to serving a major tourist destination. They’re owned by the same company as British Airways and Iberia. However, they’ve historically had a stronger partnership with Untied Airlines than American Airlines.
Even though the Airbus A330-200s were parked four and a half years ago, that fleet is still only about 13 years old on average. It was larger in quantity and newer than the 9 orphan -300s which were certainly on the way out, even without the pandemic.
These planes were ex-US Airways, from shortly before taking over American, and had just been retrofit to offer premium economy before being parked.
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 »
