On their inaugural Los Angeles – Sydney – Los Angeles flights, in first class, American Airlines will be pouring 2010 Penfolds Grange.
Penfolds Grange is a fantastic wine, enough to make me wish that I had tried to get on the inaugural in first class.
The outbound is in fact sold out in First (but quite open for sale in business class). However there are still first class seats available for the inaugural Sydney – Los Angeles leg.
You can say a lot of things about American’s changes to their frequent flyer program announced this week. This, however, is not one of them…
Hyatt used to have a super generous and game-able offer where anyone with even Hilton Gold (through a credit card signup) could get temporary Diamond status complete with confirmable suite upgrades.
They eliminated that last fall, and have been on again, off again at best with select status challenges that do not ‘advance’ top tier elite status.
With many members worried over Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood, Hyatt took to Twitter to look for disaffected elites from other chains and offer them status matches.
Peter Finch won an Oscar for his role in Network as a declining news anchor about to be fired, but who causes ratings to spike when announces on the air that he will commit suicide in an upcoming broadcast. He stays on, and offers one diatribe more famous than the rest:
Dallas news anchor Ron Corning offered his own on-air diatribe of sorts against the upcoming AAdvantage program changes. He even cuts up his co-brand credit card live on television. But he seems confused about what the changes actually are.
New stackable promotion from Hilton, you can earn 2500 bonus points on each stay of 2 nights or more in December and that’s on top of the double or triple points they’re offering through end of year. Definitely register for those offers, it takes just a moment, even if you don’t have plans for a Hilton stay.
A planned new VIP terminal at LAX is expected to gain approval today.
It’s a pay facility called The Los Angeles Suite that will charge $1500 – $1800 per use. 10 celebrities out of 100 or so passengers per day are anticipated at the facility. Michael J. Fox and Reese Witherspoon have written letters to the airport in support of the project.
This week the TSA confiscated a 5 year old’s Buzz Lightyear toy from Disney World. The boy cried as the TSA threw it away.
Is confiscating stuffed toys from children worse than manipulating screening devices to see passengers naked? I’m not sure. But they’re an ineffective, law breaking agent that doesn’t just fail to contribute to safety, they actually make us less safe.
Back in September Alaska Airlines and Icelandair announced a re-introduction of their partnership.
The two airlines partnered up until June 2013. Speculation at the time was that the partnership crumbled because…
Monday news broke that Marriott is acquiring Starwood.
The deal may make sense for Marriott, at least there’s a chance it’s a good deal, because Marriott has strength both in full service and select service and in the United States while Starwood has a global footprint (they are a smaller company but in more countries than Marriott) with iconic hotels.
Starwood is offering a discount of up to 25% on purchased points through December 31. Starwood points are the most valuable loyalty currency.
If you need to top off most any frequent flyer account this could be strategically useful.
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 »
