Delta made a number of very revealing comments at today’s Investor Day. Their upsell plans, and vision for the future, paint very clearly the end of elite upgrades. And they’ll say as much — 80% of first class seats will be paid for in some way (upsells) and customers will have to buy exactly the product they want.
A financial analyst even asked the logical question of whether upgrades will be at best to extra legroom seating. And Delta didn’t deny it.
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.
Through Friday only United is offering to sell miles at the lowest price I’ve ever seen from MileagePlus — in fact at 1.88 cents apiece it’s the price that US Airways used to sell miles for prior to the merger with American.
The US and Cuba have reached an agreement to resume commercial flights between the two countries. We won’t be limited to charter flights anymore.
Uber is working to embed itself into as many other apps as possible. We’ve seen deals to put Uber inside the Hilton and IHG apps. They have a new effort to let anyone building an app launch into Uber.
The biggest ‘get’ so far has to be the Uber deal with Facebook Messenger which comes with a $20 ride credit even for existing Uber customers.
With the change to allowing Citi’s premium co-brand credit card to grant American Airlines Admirals Club access to no fee authorized users on the account, here’s an illustration just how far this scales. Party in the Admirals Club…
Who knew it was possible to fly Air New Zealand using American miles! Under a brand new rules change, for one specific flight at least, it now is.
Since so much of the AAdvantage award rules are unpublished, I wrote the Ultimate Guide to Booking Award Tickets Using American Miles.
During 2015 American AAdvantage gave a boost towards elite status to members buying premium fares in the form of an ‘elite qualifying points’ bonus.
For 2016 they’ve eliminated qualifying points and are instead incorporating the premium fare bonus into extra qualifying miles for premium fares.
United is matching.
It’s the end of 2015 so remaining hotel promotions are ending, and the new year is upon us. We now know what three of the major hotel chains have in store for the January through April timeframe.
And I’m especially interested to see what Hyatt is going to do once they have a new CRM in place in the coming days.
Qantas doesn’t have a very strong rewards program, i.e. points earning-and-burning, in Qantas Frequent Flyer.
But within the confines of the Aussie market they do a really good job recognizing their top tier elites.
Years ago I used to like getting cookies from Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan when I held their MVP Gold status. However this holiday note was sharing with me by a Qantas top tier Platinum One member. And it blew me away.
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 »
