United Airlines is making 3 big changes to MileagePlus that no one is likely to be happy about. They’re making changes to award rules, upgrades, and upgrade pricing.
I think we’ve discovered the worst hotels in the world that have resort fees. Not coincidentally, they’re at two of the most absurdly named properties I’ve come across.
A passenger seated in 4A handed a letter to a flight attendant outlining their travel requirements. They insisted that no coffee be served on board the flight, no nuts, and that they needed to be shielded from perfumes; colognes; scented soap; body lotion; and jet fuel.
This move is another opportunity for the unprecedentedly large transfer bonuses that Bilt offers, and for other special promotions like status match offers.
The airline announced today the addition to Socorro Tequila onboard starting June 1, and new snack baskets starting June 11 (in addition to a separate midday basket in addition to the morning and afternoon baskets).
But what I’m most interested in is the June 1 expansion of buy on board items.
Flight attendants are getting busted for accepting gifts from passengers – after passengers have been inspired to bribe their crew by a viral TikTok trend.
The captain halted the departure process, emergency vehicles surrounded the plane, and armed FBI agents boarded the aircraft. Initially passengers were told there was a ‘technical issue’ but that was clearly false when government agents, rather than mechanics, boarded the plane with weapons and not tools.
The better approach, now that these fees are showing up and making the property look exorbitantly expensive, might just be to call the cops on parties before any damage gets done? Put out free donuts and coffee and make the hotel a place cops are happy to stop by first, of course.
Mandatory tipping of people is bad enough, mandatory tipping of machines seems to be where we’re headed. You’ll face a surcharge to cover… their health care costs? I guess that’s what they’re calling maintenance these days.
The idea here, I guess, is to shift the burden of homelessness off of society at large and onto airlines and other lounge operators even where those lounges have extremely limited space and too much demand, and they’re expensive to maintain – and lack social services. What could possibly go wrong?
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 »
