Oct 13 2016

Jessica Leeds claimed that in the early 1980s she was on a flight to New York and was upgraded into an empty first class seat next to Donald Trump. She says Trump lifted the armrest and began to touch her inappropriately (“He was like an octopus”).

Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson went on television and invoked ‘the aviation defense’ where she just starts naming older aircraft models. Bizarrely she suggests that L-1011s and DC-10s didn’t fly to New York, so we don’t have to look at those aircraft. And first class armrests don’t move. Except they did.

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Oct 13 2016

Bill payment service Plastiq lets you pay people by check and they charge your credit card.

Plastiq has a promotion where instead of their normal 2.5% fee for processing payments, they’ll charge you:

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Oct 12 2016

British Airways offers a pretty mediocre intra-European business class. But they haven’t lost the loyalty of the British royals.

Kate Middleton, the the Duchess of Cambridge, visited the Netherlands on her first solo international trip as a member of the British royal family. She returned home on British Airways.

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Oct 12 2016

ProPublica came out with a piece this week on the American-US Airways merger, airline consolidation in general, that suggests lobbying played an undue influence in the Justice Department’s decision to settle and stop blocking consolidation — the upshot being “you’re paying for it.”

I’ve gotten about two dozen emails and tweets about it, and I’ve responded with some thoughts, but given the volume of interest the piece and some concerns about make sense to share more broadly.

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Oct 12 2016

After Qatar Airways placed an order for up to 100 Boeing planes on Friday, Delta CEO Ed Bastian returned to his soap box crusading against having to compete against smaller and less successful airlines that he claims are as subsidized as Delta is.

But this time he seems to just be making stuff up.

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Oct 12 2016

The benefit is $100 off the total price for everyone on the itinerary. So if your fare is less than $100 per person, you’re still going to get $100 off. Take an $80 roundtrip, $160 for 2 passengers, your net cost is $60 for both.

Here’s how you book.

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Oct 12 2016

In the middle of last month updated flight search on their website. That upended the way they display flights for sale. But it also changed award search, too.

No, they didn’t add any new partners for online booking. But they did screw up the award calendar. Limiting your search to American Airlines flights doesn’t actually limit your search to American Airlines flights anymore.

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Oct 12 2016

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.

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Oct 11 2016

Last month there were 2 offers of 500 Virgin America miles each for signing up for emails.

Now there’s another one: 500 Elevate points if you sign up for the Virgin Produced newsletter by October 26. That’s easy points worth $11, that should become Alaska Airlines miles if you don’t redeem them first.

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Oct 11 2016

Delta announced this evening that Richard Anderson, who stepped down as CEO in May but remained the airline’s Chairman, “has elected to retire as executive chairman effective this date.”

They did not offer any reason.

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