The Only Thing Consistent About Travel Loyalty Programs is Complexity. Here’s Why.

by Gary Leff

Dec 28 2015

There are no hard and fast rules, only tendencies. And the tendency to devalue – which isn’t universal – is consistent with the trend towards rewarding less across the board, tying rewards to spending (while rewarding even high spend less), and then making tweaks to the less rewarding model as business needs dictate.

Business decisions made in isolation compound over time taking what was once a simple program and making it complex. Multiply that out over tens of millions of members that a given program is trying to serve and tweaks along the way get made which only add to the complexity.

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Help Me Try Something New, What Luggage Should I Buy?

by Gary Leff

Dec 27 2015

For the longest time I was a ‘whatever bag I can buy for $35’ guy. But I travel enough that a quality bag isn’t really that expensive — it’s one thing to spend a few hundred dollars on a bag that you’ll use once or twice a year, but on a per-trip basis the extra cost for a quality bag isn’t all that much when you’re using it every week.

I’ve been using my 19-inch Briggs & Riley Baseline for several years. It’s the old two wheel kind, and I’ve finally been converted to preferring four wheels….

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Airline Starts Serving Hot Meals on Flights Over 1 Hour, Passengers Complain

by Gary Leff

Dec 27 2015

Air India will offer only hot vegetarian meals on domestic flights 61 to 90 minutes long.

They used to serve cold sandwiches. Then introduced hot meals. But they received many complaints about the hot items not being vegetarian so they will serve only vegetarian. Because the flights aren’t long enough to offer a choice of meal options. This is highly controversial.

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Turkish Aircraft Makes Emergency Landing in Russia

by Gary Leff

Dec 27 2015

Turkish Airlines has some really interesting ‘fifth freedom’ routes — flights between two countries other than their home country. Last I checked they were fourth in the world for number of destinations served, and they served the most countries at 110.

Here’s a fifth freedom route I didn’t know about: Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The flight operates 3 times a week in each direction.

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American Express Platinum and Starwood Cards Will Get You HIGH SPEED Internet at Several Major US Airports

by Gary Leff

Dec 26 2015

Last year American Express announced that Platinum (and Centurion) cardholders would get unlimited Boingo internet hot spot access. This year the benefit was expanded to Starwood co-brand credit card holders. The retail price of this benefit would exceed $700 per year.

The benefit is going to be really useful for me, because Boingo will be providing true high speed internet to members at 7 major US airports.

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