In a SmarterTravel.com piece Avital Andrews carries a bunch of my basic frequent flyer advice on how to use your miles: awards are better than upgrades, don’t use miles for merchandise (although experiences are ok), try to add stopovers, and don’t give your miles to charity.
A collection of the most interesting links you’ll want to see, many you’ll want to click.
In the fall I offered Five Good Reasons to Fly Delta. As I told a reporter yesterday, you fly Delta for a reliable airline operation and because you live in near a Delta hub or the Upper Midwest. You don’t choose Delta because of its frequent flyer program.
Despite United’s “monkey see, monkey do” copy cat approach of Delta, theirs remains a better frequent flyer program but a far worse airline operation. Perhaps their IT problems are the reason they haven’t been able to cram down their mileage program the way Delta has done.
For the past four years I’ve been fairly focused in my domestic flying with American.
Yesterday Mommy Points told me that I should fly the new Spirit Airlines Los Angeles – Baltimore redeye flight that I called the most uncomfortable flight in America.
It’s not even the legroom, though, why I won’t fly Spirit — I can buy up to ‘the Big Front Seat’. And I don’t mind paying checked bag fees if the total trip cost is still cheaper.
No, there are two other things about the airline that make me want to steer clear. And they’re not things customers usually think about.
A Forbes piece lays out the argument that realistic continued growth just in Gold Passport could add 10% to the hotel chain’s stock price.
I took a Cathay Pacific flight once where a woman in business class used moisturizer from the amenity kit prior to departure, and complained to a flight attendant that it was causing her skin to break out. It sounded like she wanted special treatment or compensation, maybe an upgrade to first class. Cathay made the woman deplane — since the last thing the airline wanted was for a medical emergency to occur midflight and cause a diversion.
Etihad recently took an ever stricter position with regard to fear of passenger illness: A teenage girl was leaning against her mother at check-in at the Manchester airport in the U.K. She was pale, because she’s Scottish. So Etihad felt she might not be fit to fly.
Last month I wrote about American’s renovation plans for their Miami Admirals Club by gate D15. This is the club across from the airport’s new American Express Centurion lounge.
Renovations are being done in stages in order to continue to use the lounge in the interim. They can’t give up all of that capacity, the lounge is overcrowded as it is (and so is their lounge at gate D30, which offers barely-usable internet but better food choices, though the showers at both are great).
You may have heard of the Pan Am Dining Experience where you can eat dinner on board a replica of a Pan Am 747.
It turns out that’s not the only way to eat dinner inside an aircraft. I ate dinner inside a retired L-1011 at the Delta Flight Museum before going onstage to emcee the Freddie Awards a couple of months ago.
Airlines see themselves as selling transportation between A and C at a certain price. That a connecting itinerary stops at B is immaterial.
A passenger believes they are buying a seat on a flight from A to B and then on to C. So it’s ok to use only the seat from A to B, and not use the seat they’ve paid in full for from B to C.
But the airline thinks travel between A to B is a totally different product with a different price.
United’s computer malfunction last week was an inconvenience to huge numbers of travelers. I even think it’s endemic of the broader problems at the airline.
I’m not sure, though, that it justifies a class action lawsuit. Not everyone agrees with me, however. Especially plaintiffs lawyers.
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 »
