Sorry, Phoenix. This is How Airlines Choose International Routes.

by Gary Leff

Apr 25 2015

Size of a city alone isn’t enough to support international air service. Size of the metro area, primary destinations from that area, available aircraft, and concentration of business are much more important. And that’s why Phoenix – the 6th largest city in the US – gets only a single transatlantic flight (and a marginal one for British Airways at that).

Here are key factors airlines use in choosing international flying. And it’s why even when the idea comes up for Phoenix, it gets rejected…

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IHG Rewards Club Comes Clean, Reveals List of Hotels Changing Award Pricing Next Week

by Gary Leff

Apr 24 2015

Last week I wrote “No, I Do Not Trust IHG Rewards Club.”

IHG Rewards Club is the loyalty program for Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and related brands. And my ire was prompted by their announcement that they would be changing the redemption categories of a subset of their hotels, but weren’t telling us which ones.

They were doing this at the same time they were announcing there would be changes to their elite program — most of which they wouldn’t tell us until later, but we should trust them those changes will be good — and they announced that points will begin to expire after 12 months of inactivity when in the past IHG Rewards Club points did not expire.

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Another Way Delta Makes It Hard for You to Use Your Miles

by Gary Leff

Apr 24 2015

Delta didn’t just eliminate their award chart. They didn’t just impose three week advance purchase requirements on saver awards across a majority of their routes. And award seats aren’t just hard to get.

They also impose a practice known as “journey control” — a given Delta flight may be available to some customers as a saver award and not to others.. and it has nothing to do with their elite status.

Here’s what “journey control” is, and what it means for your miles.

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Tell Me What You Want to Know, and I Will Try to Answer You

by Gary Leff

Apr 23 2015

Here’s your chance. I will my best to cover your questions. Please leave requests in the comments section. As my boss once wrote making a similar request on his blog, “The only promise is that of weak monotonicity, namely that your mention won’t lower the chance of the topic being covered.” In other words, I won’t promise to cover everything, though I’ll read and ponder everything that’s written here in the comments. It may take me awhile to work through, goodness knows there are things I’m behind on (trip reports, cough, trip reports…). But I’d love to hear from you!

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