Uber VIP Status is Changing

by Gary Leff

Mar 31 2016

Arguably the most worthless elite status in the world is OpenTable VIP. The second most worthless? Perhaps it’s UberVIP.

If you’ve had over 100 rides in a city where the feature is available, you’ve been ‘upgraded’ to VIP status which means you can select the option for UberX called UberVIP which gives you the best cars only with drivers rated 4.8 or higher. And since you aren’t looking at all available cars, you likely won’t get the closest car, and may have to wait longer.

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Alaska Airlines Guts Emirates Awards Without Notice, But There’s a Trick to Still Save Miles

by Gary Leff

Mar 31 2016

I love Alaska Airlines and the Mileage Plan program, but I love it a lot less this morning. While they don’t have plans to go revenue-based and most of their awards remain reasonable, they have gutted their award chart for travel on their partner Emirates and they have done it without notice.

Emirates has been my favorite Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan redemption. They fly to a number of US cities and have a fantastic first class product especially onboard their Airbus A380 which has showers.

These awards are mostly going to be out of reach now for Mileage Plan members.

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American Has Changed its Fare Rules to Charge You More, Here’s How to Beat Them

by Gary Leff

Mar 30 2016

Increasingly American Airlines has been imposing a new rule in its fares to make your tickets more expensive.

It used to be that if two one-way fares, say San Diego to Dallas and Dallas to Fort Lauderdale, were cheaper than the fare for San Diego to Fort Lauderdale you’d pay the cheaper ‘sum of the two one ways’ for your ticket. Now for many of the cheapest fares in many markets American has updated their fare rules to prohibit “End of End Ticketing” which means you cannot combine the cheap fares, you have to pay the more expensive fare.

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Delta Charges $1000 to Buy Miles, Then Refuses to Sell the Promised Award. Can She Sue?

by Gary Leff

Mar 30 2016

Tiffany describes finding Delta award seats on the airline’s website. She’s making the booking for four passengers, and the miles aren’t all in the account. So she calls the airline, has them set up the award, and then purchases about $1000 in miles in order to buy the award.

And then the price of the award jumped from 110,000 to 375,000 per person one way when the agent went to issue the tickets.

After escalating to web support, a supervisor, and the re-issue desk they couldn’t get the flights to ticket at the price that would be initially quoted each time. They finally tried “seven different itineraries across three days” before getting something to come up at the promised price for the Tokyo – New York itinerary.

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Inside Etihad’s The Residence, the Most Luxurious Airline Seat in the Sky

by Gary Leff

Mar 29 2016

Since I was flying Etihad’s First Apartment three times in January and February, I reached out to Etihad to see if it might be possible to take a look at their ‘seat’ that’s even beyond first class (provided no one had booked it on my flight, of course): The Residence.

I’ve already written about the separate Etihad Residence lounge at New York JFK. And while I’m going to write a trip report about Etihad’s A380 First Class, I’m especially excited to share the inside of Etihad’s super-exclusive Residence.

Ever since the product was announced nearly two years ago, it’s been the subject of awe. It’s the product that Nicole Kidman is flying in her commercial for Etihad.

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