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$1450 Roundtrip First Class on Etihad, Colombo – Dallas
Etihad has a fare that allows business or first class travel — roundtrip — originating in Colombo, Sri Lanka and traveling to Dallas Fort Worth and back for ~ US$1450 all-in. The most natural routing that comes up most often and most easily is Colombo – Abu Dhabi – Chicago – Dallas. But the Abu Dhabi – Chicago flight (EY 150/151) doesn’t offer a first class cabin. For first class you’d want to route via New York JFK, Washington Dulles, or Europe (e.g. Paris, Frankfurt). Europe routings would mean flying American’s first class transatlantic. If you can swing a London routing you’d get American’s new 777-300ER in first. Here’s an Orbitz multi-day grid of available fares, searching business class: And here’s a sample itinerary priced on the Etihad website: One-way travel originating in Colombo is…
United Eliminating Its Cleveland Hub
I never understood Cleveland as a hub, even if it was a ‘regional jet hub’ with a handful of Boeing 737 flights thrown in. It’s just not the major business destination you want that can support lots of full fare traffic. Regional jet-to-regional jet connections certainly aren’t that attractive from a flyer’s perspective. And now that United and Continental have merged it is somewhat duplicative of the airline’s massive Chicago O’Hare hub operation. There’s no reason to shuttle traffic through Cleveland on a daily basis when you’re doing the same thing 315 miles away. Nonetheless, when airlines merge they always promise to continue serving all of the cities they currently do, and tell those cities that are hubs that they will remain so. Only it doesn’t work that day. Just ask the folks in Cincinnati…
30,000 Bonus Miles for an Alaska Airlines Visa With No Spending Requirement
Yesterday I wrote about an offer for the Alaska Airlines Visa with 25,000 miles after first purchase and 15,000 more for $10,000 spend within 6 months. So 40,000 miles for $10,000 in spend. Steven commented in another post that there’s also an offer of 30,000 miles without a minimum spend requirement. That offer was first made last summer</a, though the link to it was no longer available. It's good to see it back. The offer is for 25,000 miles on approval (no minimum spending) and 5000 more miles “for being a customer.” There doesn’t appear to be any verification that you need to be a pre-existing customer, that they will do anything like check to see whether you have bank accounts with them already for instance, and I’d bet that anyone — even folks who…
United Offers a Reprieve: Won’t Implement Its Devaluation Until Monday, February 3
Last night reader H. e-mailed that United was extending their old award chart by a few days, not yet implementing their newly devalued award chart pricing until February 3. Matthew is reporting the same thing: the new award chart doesn’t go into effect until Monday. We don’t know what time on Monday but my best guess is the beginning of the business day in Chicago. It’s possible, of course, that it could happen earlier. I can only imagine that they weren’t able to handle the IT and customer service functions related to the change properly and needed all hands on deck when they made the switchover — which in some sense is hard to believe because they announced the change three months ago and have had ample time to prepare, and they’ve certainly made award…
A TSA Screener In His Own Words (And What His Slang Means)
Politico has a piece by a former Chicago TSA screener. We learn what his day to day experiences were like, and what he thought of the job he was doing. And we get these gems: TSA Speak: “Code red” is “an attractive female passenger wearing red.” “Alfalfa” is “an attractive female passenger.” “Fanny Pack, Lane 2” means there’s “an attractive female passenger” “Xray Xray Xray!” means.. “an attractive female passenger” and “Yellow Alert” is code for… “attractive female passenger, yellow clothing.” On Profiling: Until 2010 (not long after the TSA standard operating procedure manual was accidentially leaked to the public), all TSA officers worked with a secret list printed on small slips of paper that many of us taped to the back of our TSA badges for easy reference: the Selectee Passport List. It consisted…
Up to 40,000 Miles for an Alaska Airlines Visa
Good offers for the Alaska Airlines Visa from Bank of America come and go. One that’s been around since last October is 40,000 miles — 25,000 on approval and 15,000 for spending $2000 every month for a year. That one is available for both the personal and business card. Now there’s another 40,000 mile offer — this time 25,000 on approval and 15,000 more for spending $10,000 on the card within 6 months. It’s marketed to Alaska Airlines elite members, but in the past I’ve not heard of difficulty with anyone applying and getting the offer regardless of their status in the Mileage Plan progrma. As per usual with this card (and with Bank of America cards generally) the annual fee is not waived the first year. The cards come with an annual $99 companion…
Are We About to See the End of Free Internet for Elites?
Last month Hilton removed the benefit promise of ‘high speed’ internet for elites from its terms and conditions. And now we know why. Hilton is going to introduce two-tiered internet access at its Hampton Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, Homewood Suites, and Home 2 Suites brands. Basic internet will be free, but high speed access will be ~ $3.95 a day. And elites will have to pay if they want higher tiered access. If this was going to be higher speed than currently offered, while maintaining current free offerings, that would be fine — pay more to get more than you already receive. But I’m skeptical, why invest in what’s free when failing to do so becomes a revenue opportunity? As a guest I need access to internet wherever I go, and I bring my own…
Hyatt Will Buy Your Drinks, Passengers Will Bite You, and Southwest Shanghais American (Bits ‘n Pieces for January 30, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: Drunk passenger kicks another traveler in the testicles, bites flight attendant. In court the passenger claimed she “would have calmed down if the cabin crew had left her alone.” So I guess it was their fault. The head of Hyatt’s Gold Passport program is buying drinks for Milepoint members. You can even win a free trip to Chicago to join in. TopCashBack’s 3% rebate on Hyatt reservations is ending in 3 days. Turns out they’ll be bumping the rebate up to 4% for about a week. Southwest is the big winner in the concessions the Department of Justice wrangled out of the American-US Airways merger. Not only did they pick up slots at New York LaGuardia, but they’re going to get to add 27 flights at Washington National…
The First US Airways Plane Has Been Repainted American
The first US Airways plane (an Airbus A319) has been painted in the ‘new’ American Airlines paintjob. Their process takes 10 takes to paint a paint, removing the existing paint, sanding, power washing, sealing, painting, and doing final touch ups. They use 80 gallons of paint on an A319. One of the reasons for keeping the ‘new’ American paint job is that there were plenty of American planes that had already been rolled out with it — 212 total mainline and Eagle planes, with 350 to go. Repainting all planes rather than just the un-repainted American planes and the US Airways planes would have been even more expensive, and taken planes out of service for more time. That the airline chose the cheaper option led me to wonder whether it was ‘really’ left up to…
