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.
Fuel surcharges don’t matter much to most consumers. They’re advertised as part of the paid fare when buying a ticket. They even earn credit in revenue-based frequent flyer programs. They really only matter to consumers who have airfare discounts that don’t apply to the surcharges, and to frequent flyers booking awards.
Since fuel prices have dropped, and fuel surcharges are now absurd on their face, several airlines have just renamed ‘fuel surcharges’ as ‘carrier-imposed surcharges’. In the US that’s important because in the US fuel surcharges unrelated to the price of fuel are considered by the DOT to be illegal.
Now there’s literally no justification for the surcharges. They’re just a fee for nothing. They’re ‘carrier-imposed’ (of course, who else sets fares?) but don’t cover anything in particular. That begs the question, why do airlines do this?
Emirates has become one of the world’s largest airlines, and shows profits, but it has quite a few Airbus A380s without necessarily having routes robust enough to support the aircraft.
They’re taking the A380 off of the Dallas route (which they face competition to and through the Gulf region from Etihad and Qatar) and off the Houston route (the energy sector isn’t performing well…).
So they’re adding A380s to Washington Dulles and a second Los Angeles flight.
New routes and upgauged aircraft are often ripe with award space. Two A380s on the Los Angeles route is quite a lot and indeed Washington Dulles was downgauged from a 777 to a 787 by Etihad. With that kind of capacity perhaps award availability will be quite good over time.
John W. asks, “With Starwood and Marriott merging does it still make sense to get a Starwood credit card?”
Goldman Sachs downgraded their recommendation on Hyatt’s stock to sell. But they’re really making a broader point about the economy, and the toll it will take on the lodging industry.
“Seat pitch” is the distance between seat back to seat back. It’s not the same as legroom, exactly — you aren’t always getting the same legroom with the same seat pitch because some airlines use thicker and thinner seats — but it’s the most generally accepted proxy for legroom.
It’s shocking to me that both Lufthansa and British Airways offer the same legroom in economy and business class for their intra-Europe flights. And that’s 30 inches, which is tighter than what the US majors offer in coach. British Airways “Club Europe” is coach with a blocked middle seat and a cold meal tray.
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.
Uber is ostensibly valued at over $60 billion. To really be ‘worth’ that they have to grow rapidly, and arguably beyond on demand ridership into a ‘transportation logistics company’ moving goods and not just people. And they have to actually make money.
While there are certainly network effects — the more consumers use Uber, and the more drivers offering rides on their platform, the more valuable they are. The first person with a fax machine had a useless piece of equipment. There was no one to send them anything, and they couldn’t send a document to anyone else. The fax machine became more valuable the more people that had them. But even there, when’s the last time you sent a fax? I believe I’ve sent two in the past year.
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.
Miles for real estate transactions used to be a pretty big thing. When I bought a condo in 2006 I earned six figures in United miles for being referred to a realtor. Basically they were rebating a bit more than half their commission in the form of United miles.
People usually think that meant I had to work with whatever real estate agent was assigned to me. That’s not the case at all. Instead, I simply needed to work with the brokerage firm I was referred to. I didn’t think much of the first agent I got, so I had the brokerage manager re-assign me to someone far sharper.
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 »
