Strategic Uses for British Airways 40% Economy Award Discount from London

by Gary Leff

Oct 19 2015

British Airways is offering 40% off economy awards originating in London (although it apparently works from other cities in the UK as well) booked by November 2 for travel through March 20 to a variety of destinations.

Since you still pay full taxes, including exorbitant fuel surcharges, this isn’t as great a deal as it might seem. You’ll often pay a substantial portion of what an economy ticket would cost without the availability of a paid ticket and without earning miles. However this can be especially valuable for:

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The New Disney Frozen-Themed Boeing 737 is Awesome Both Inside and Out

by Gary Leff

Oct 18 2015

Canadian airline WestJet has a new Frozen-themed Boeing 737 featuring Anna, Elsa and Olaf. With the airline headquartered in Calgary, that seems somehow appropriate.

The aircraft’s tail shows Anna and Elsa ‘celebrating sisterhood and the magic of snow.’ The interior of the plane moves from cold to warm, back to front, mimicking the outside of the aircraft.

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These are the Best Starwood Hotels in Each Region of the World

by Gary Leff

Oct 18 2015

Best can mean a lot of things. There are pure quality metrics, and we can debate those. But Starwood has done something interesting in coming up with a list of bests as deemed by Starwood Preferred Guest members which is to say that they are the hotels that best satisfy members and meet their needs (which is going to incorporate quality but also convenience of location and price point).

It’s an interesting methodology: What they did is they took the hotels with the highest customer survey ratings (“Guest Experience Index”), the best ratings and reviews on the Starwood website, and the most award nights redeemed. These three categories were evenly weighted, though they removed the properties that had low scores on customer surveys and online reviews, so ultimately removed several frequently redeemed-for hotels.

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What the Integration of American and US Airways Really Looks Like — and What Agents are Saying

by Gary Leff

Oct 17 2015

Things went very smoothly this morning departing Austin the morning that US Airways transitioned to publicly become American Airlines. Computer systems were working, passengers were getting processed, flights were taking off. My own flight pushed back on time and even landed almost 15 minutes early in Phoenix. Not everything went as planned, though…

Agents went through training at various times. One that I spoke to had just done her training, she wanted to be fresh for the cutover. Another who trained in August told me she assumed that she would go to training and that would be it — she was surprised to be emailed her account credentials immediately after, and she had two months to practice.

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The US Airways Brand is (Mostly) Gone, But for Employees it Will Live On Awhile

by Gary Leff

Oct 17 2015

Today the US Airways brand has been mostly retired for customers. The US Airways frequent flyer program was folded into American AAdvantage back in March. What were once US Airways flights are now American Airlines flights.

For employees though US Airways continues to live on in a very real way. Here are the US Airways systems that still need to be merged over the coming year.

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