Jun 29 2016

The world news and financial markets have been fixated the the UK’s vote to leave the EU for nearly a week. As far as what this means for travel, airfares to Europe are low — they were low already thanks to low fuel prices, too much capacity, and low cost carrier competition. The British pound has dropped, but it was already cheap relative to the dollar. It’s a great time to book travel.

Bizarrely, perhaps, it turns out that the plan to allow a vote on Brexit was apparently hatched inside an airport. In fact, it may have been sketched out at what was then Pizzeria Uno in Chicago O’Hare’s American Airlines terminal 3.

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Jun 29 2016

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.

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Jun 29 2016

Norwegian is offering roundtrips between New York JFK and London from $361 January – March. Norwegian Air Shuttle operates the route with a Boeing 787.

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Jun 29 2016

In February I wrote that the big US airlines wouldn’t get their way with the government opening formal consultations with the governments of the UAE and Qatar. Instead, I suggested that “[t]he US carriers could still eke out a face save” because “[t]hey still have powerful friends.”

And it looks like that’s what’s happening, according to Politico.

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Jun 29 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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Jun 28 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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Jun 28 2016

There were two blasts and gunfire reported inside the terminal at Istanbul Atatürk Airport today causing multiple injuries.

As with any incident like this, most initial reports are either wrong in key details or incomplete. We do not yet know who did this, why, the extent of the damage or what this will mean for airport operations. It’s definitely a developing story.

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Jun 28 2016

Japan Airlines has a fantastic first class product. Getting to Australia on miles, let alone for more than two passengers, is hard. So while there are only a subset of readers who will use this, it’s worth knowing when Japan Airlines award space becomes available for four or more passengers in first class between Tokyo and Sydney.

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Jun 28 2016

Sometimes you just want to get to your hotel room as quickly as possible. Hotel chains had the idea that they could accommodate this guest desire, and save on front desk labor costs, by rolling out check-in kiosks.

I even won a whole bunch of Starpoints a dozen years ago by winning a contest to name Sheraton’s solution (“Sheraton SpeedCheck”). But I never actually used one. And it turns out that people don’t choose to go to the kiosk instead of the front desk.

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Jun 28 2016

Japan Airlines already has one of my favorite programs, allowing redemption not just on oneworld airlines like American, Cathay Pacific, and Qatar but on other partners like Emirates, Bangkok Airways, and Air France as well as Alaska Airlines.

Japan Airlines Mileage Bank is a Starwood transfer partner. 20,000 Starwood points transfer to 25,000 JAL miles.

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