Through July 8 American is offering to sell you miles for as little as 1.72 cents, which is the lowest price I’ve seen.
After last week’s program changes and the March 22 award chart devaluation perhaps they need to drop price in order to find buyers.
I went to the counter and while they had my reservation, I was told they wouldn’t give me a car. They took more reservations than they had vehicles, and so the woman at the desk said they weren’t going to honor any bookings made that day.
It seemed like Hertz should have done more than just told me I was out of luck. If they didn’t have cars, they shouldn’t have given me a reservation. And if they weren’t going to honor the reservation they should have tried to take care of things some other way.
At the end of the week the US Department of Transportation handed out route awards to US airlines to fly to Cuba — for every Cuban destination requested except for Havana. There are more traffic rights available than there are requests to fly for Cuba’s secondary destinations.
American AAdvantage program terms specifically disallow earning or redemption on Cuba flights. However:
The more I think about United’s new business class seat the more I like it. It’s not my favorite business class seat in the world. It’s not even my second favorite business class seat. But United will have a lot of these new seats in their aircraft — the first Boeing 777-300ER comes with 60.
My only disappointment is how long it will take to retrofit existing aircraft: it will be 2021 before the bulk of the fleet has them.
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American’s new business class seat will be the B/E Aerospace Super Diamond going into their Boeing 787-9, Airbus A350, and later retrofits of Boeing 777-200s.
American is introducing a premium economy product beginning with the Boeing 787-9 later this year, then the Airbus A350, both new aircraft for the airline.
Historically awards between the US and New Zealand has been one of the toughest things to book. Years ago Air New Zealand used to open up business class awards 60 days prior to flight. Then they stopped. There really hasn’t been meaningful Air New Zealand business class award space in years except for a brief span back in February.
Right now though there are a handful of dates over the summer where 2 business class awards are available using Star Alliance miles (e.g. United, Aeroplan, LifeMiles) between several U.S. cities and New Zealand on Air New Zealand.
American Airlines announced that August 1 is the date they’ll begin to move to a revenue-based frequent flyer program with the method for earning miles on American’s own flights changing on that day.
The airline’s President, Scott Kirby, has told investors that the revenue-based frequent flyer program will drive higher revenues. That’s unlikely to be true.
The oneworld alliance no longer requires to through-check luggage onto partner airlines when passengers are traveling on more than one reservation.
Cathay Pacific has announced that they are not only ending through-checked luggage on separate reservations, they are going a step further and will no longer provide protection during irregular operations to passengers traveling on two different reservations.
The demise of TWA is often blamed on investor Carl Icahn who acquired the airline in 1988 through a leveraged buyout. But the reason it was an attractive buyout target even then was because its assets were of greater value than the airline.
The biggest strategic problem that TWA faced was St. Louis. While other airlines were making money in the late 90s, TWA wasn’t, and that was largely a function of their home market. St. Louis didn’t have nearly the percentage of high yield business passengers as other airline hub cities.
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 »
