A week ago I wrote about a Delta flight from Los Angeles to Minneapolis that diverted to Salt Lake City due to ‘unruly crew’. After an 80 minute delay the flight continued to Minneapolis — apparently with replacements for 3 of the cabin crew. Delta then sent an apology note to customers for ‘team members’ who ‘did not display their best behavior.’
Now we know the rest of the story.
British Airways flight BA295 from London Heathrow to Chicago turned around two hours into flight declaring an emergency. It landed at Heathrow around 5:30pm local time. The captain told passengers there was a “technical fault” with the plane.
The ‘technical fault’ was landing on 3 sets of wheels instead of 5. Fire trucks responded. Passengers had to disembark in such a way as to not tip the plane.
Wednesday’s American Airlines flight 109 from London to Los Angeles turned back while over Iceland when a couple of passengers and several flight attendants reported feeling lightheaded.
American returned to London where they have significant staff, mechanical, and crew resources rather than diverting to a closer airport — which bore out as the correct choice given that people on the flight were evaluated on the scene but did not require medical treatment. The cause of the incident remains unknown at this point.
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.
Virgin America CEO Dave Cush was taken by surprise with the question, and he does try to walk his Donald Trump endorsement back some.
The Donald used to have a travel booking site (“The Art of the Travel Deal… There are plenty of other sites out there, but only GoTrump.com gets the best deals.”). He owned an airline and went bust. And he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
The single most lucrative thing you can do to earn large amounts of miles, quickly and easily, is to sign up for credit cards that offer big up front bonuses.
American said to expect more premium cabin award availability, that there’s be more to come beyond what we’d already seen, and that it would be noticeable.
There’s a ton of flights with at least 4 business and 4 first class award seats available to a variety of destinations. And it is interesting that we are seeing this before premium cabin award prices go up on March 22 even!
Last night I gave a heads up that IHG Rewards Club — the points program for Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and related brands — would be adjusting the redemption prices at about 8% of participating hotels.
They’re giving a modest amount of advance notice — changes go into effect February 17. That lets you make any future date bookings now at the old price for hotels that are going up.
The things that were most interesting to me about American’s earnings call weren’t falling airfares and weakness in South America market; the Zika virus; or American’s record profits, whether it’s fair to say that they had the most profits of any airline in history (or whether Delta ‘excluding employee profit sharing’ is higher, since of course those are wages and as Doug Parker pointed out the difference in profits between the airlines is Delta’s big losses on fuel hedging, something American doesn’t do).
The audience for the earnings call was mostly financial analysts. American was getting beaten up on, despite its profits and margins, for low fares. The critique was, why don’t they do more, actively manage to find ways to keep more of the cost savings from lower fuel? However there’s always some important tidbits that matter from a customer perspective, and to understand the direction the airline is going and what matters to its leadership. So here’s what was most interesting to me, that will be a different emphasis from mainstream financial reports on the call:
Last week I noted that Citi moved the card over to using Aspire Lifestyle Concierge. They have a much smoother process now for bookings using the 4th hotel night free benefit.
But there’s another hidden benefit to this change: Aspire’s Preferred Restaurant Program.
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 »
