On Tuesday morning a Jet Airways passenger bus crashed into a parked Air India ATR turboprop in Kolkata.
It took nearly 5 days just to separate the two from each other, and the aircraft at that point still wasn’t movable. It took engineering teams from Mumbai and Kolkata a full night to pull the two apart.
One of the things I really enjoy doing is responding to reader questions. Here’s your chance. I will my best to cover many of your questions. Some I may answer right away, others that I answer will take me a few weeks.
Please leave requests in the comments section.
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….
Building your own working model aircraft — not unlike you did as a kid — is a hobby some people take into adulthood.
Only some people are better at it than you were.
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.
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.
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.
When American announced Sydney service starting in December, they did so as part of an enhanced joint venture with Qantas.
Although American’s new Sydney flight launched a week ago and Qantas has touched down in San Francisco, the Department of Transportation has yet to approve the tighter cooperation between the two airlines. Instead, after several months, the DOT requested more information.
American and Qantas have responded, and the filing makes for interesting reading.
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.
A key takeaway for me from Delta’s investor day was that they expect to sell buy ups for 70% of their first class cabins, for all intents and purposes eliminating elite upgrades. Whether the policy changes, or the supply or unmonetized first class seats simply approaches zero, if they’re successful that will transform US airline elite programs.
But there was a lot more in the presentation — like Delta’s plan to expand basic economy fares to long haul markets, a continuation of a strategy they’ve been working on for the past year. More markets with stripped down fares offering few services, and more opportunity for upselling.
As predicted there, you can now use Delta SkyMiles to pay for premium booze in the airline’s club. At a very poor valuation. And it’s more or less what the airline was planning to do across the board when they went revenue-based.
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 »
