Oct 15 2015

Bloomberg ran a long piece purporting to tell the story of how American Express came to lose to Costco co-brand deal, and along the way details the challenges American Express faces to its business model.

It begins with narrating the cultural differences between American Express and Costco and then suggests that an insult may have caused American Express to lose the deal.

American Express says the deal ended for purely economic reasons, and I suspect that’s right. I’ve suggested that as costly as it was for American Express to lose Costco, it would have been more costly to retain Costco.

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Oct 15 2015

Yesterday Jeff P. emailed me from the gate area of American Airlines flight AA70 from Dallas to Frankfurt. The flight was delayed in a little over an hour because “approximately 1000 bees have swarmed the cargo door and the crew can’t access it. A beekeeper has been called in.”

Apparently they had two swarms of bees, and a beekeeper had to be called in twice…

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Oct 15 2015

Stack a British Airways sale, the $400 AARP discount (anyone can join) with the 10% BA Visa discount and you have dirt cheap business class US-London.

Alternatively you can take advantage of a promotion to use British Airways Avios at 2.5 times their usual value when partially paying for a ticket. 30,000 points saves ~ $750 and stacks with the AARP discount.

This is available from several US cities but must be purchased by 11:59pm Eastern October 16.

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Oct 15 2015

All American Airlines hubs with London service have wide open business class award space on American’s non-stop flights for a minimum of 2 passengers most days next summer. That’s really rare.

Many flights are even available with four business class awards — including Los Angeles – London flights onboard American’s Boeing 777-300ERs.

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Oct 15 2015

Delta is tough for international upgrades. They can be tough for domestic ones too, now that they’re monetizing 58% of their forward cabin premium seats.

Though they’ve gotten more generous with top tier elites the past couple of years offering confirmed upgrade certificates from any fare (which they didn’t used to do, and lagged both United and American with their international elite upgrade benefit as a result), they’re still pretty tough.

Still — there are things you can do to find upgrade seats.

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Oct 14 2015

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.

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Oct 14 2015

I’m planning to fly American Airlines — on a legacy US Airways route — on Saturday morning. That’s the day when US Airways flights become American flights, and so American Airlines as a single airline will be the largest carrier in the world.

I’m flying out and back to a former US Airways hub city on the day the two airlines are combining as one in order to see the merger integration in action. On the whole airlines do not have a very good track record at this, although indications so far are that American’s is going very well.

I’ll be on a 6 a.m. flight so I can watch the start of the day, I’ll leave security on arrival and poke around, and take in the airport experience as passengers fly and employees operate as American Airlines for the first time.

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Oct 14 2015

I got an email from United yesterday telling me that this year’s new revenue-based mileage earning program is great because on a recent expensive short flight I earned an extra 456 miles.

Only flyers on the whole aren’t better off, earning more miles than behind. And the miles they’re earning are worth less. But if United says they did it for your own good often enough they’re hoping you believe it.

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Oct 14 2015

United announced meal service upgrades today with the biggest changes for domestic premium cabins.

There will be new choices on premium cross country flights between Newark and Los Angeles/San Francisco and in international business class. Domestic first class flights over three hours that depart between 1:30 and 3:59pm will get lunch. And Hawaii and cross country redeye departures will get a meal service.

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Oct 14 2015

Last week I broke the news that Marriott would be introducing four new benefits. Perhaps as a result Marriott decided to tease those benefits a couple of days later.

Here are details on Marriott’s new benefits — including cash and points — including when it makes sense to redeem cash and points awards versus regular free nights.

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