This summer I wrote about outstanding first class award availability on Etihad and walked through the routes between the US and Abu Dhabi that had award space for at least 2 passengers.
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.
For pilots the impossible has occurred. The US Airways-America West merger was never actually completed in large measure because pilots kept suing each other over seniority, and indeed even over which pilots could negotiate with the airline on a contract and what they had to ask for. The American merger, by giving US Airways and legacy America West (‘US Airways West’) pilots a raise and pre-committing everyone to an outcome, finally created the ability for pilots to integrate.
Yesterday represented potentially the biggest operational challenge for the combined airline, not dealing with customer reservations or frequent flyer accounts but moving to a single Flight Operating System.
On September 23 a passenger in his late 30s had an epileptic seizure on Air China flight CA1478 from Kashgar — the westernmost city in China near the border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — to Urumqi in Northwest China.
The passenger lost consciousness and was foaming at the mouth.
Alitalia has an awesomely good award chart for many destinations as I’ve covered in the past. Here are some of their business class partner redemption rates:
Via Airfare Spot use airfare metasearch site Momondo to find fares between Chicago and Southeast Asia from $436.
Flights are available for November travel, departures on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
In updating its terms and conditions, IHG Rewards Club updated its right to update its terms and conditions.
Specifically, they made clear the right to devalue the program and what they expect you to do to find out if they’ve made changes to their rules (hint: they don’t have to tell you).
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.
Drunk air marshals are now going to be on Cuba flights. This was a safety priority.
Since Hilton’s award chart changes in 2013, there haven’t been huge additional changes.
Hilton decided to alter the way they made changes to how they re-assign hotels to award categories. Instead of an annual change to tons of hotels (a schedule they really weren’t wedded to in the past anyway) they decided they would make rolling changes throughout the year. And instead of informing all members proactively of these changes, they would just post them on a web page in the name of transparency.
Doha’s still-new Hamad International Airport is over the top in many ways. For instance there’s the giant Teddy Bear sculpture. It’s made out of bronze, is 23 feet tall, and weighs nearly 20 tons. A member of the Qatari royal family apparently purchased it for about $6.8 million. It had previously been displayed in front of the Seagram’s Building on Park Avenue in New York. There’s now a big clay sculpture there.
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 »
