Oct 17 2015

I’m flying to Phoenix and back today to see how well the American Airlines-US Airways integration is going. Today is the first day of the combined operation where there’s no longer US Airways flights, only American flights and American reservations.

I decided to start the day early to see how things looked at the very beginning. And my goal was to fly on a legacy US Airways route, to a US Airways hub city, to get a real feel for how the US Airways side of things (the stuff that’s actually changing) was operating.

Here’s how everything is going as the day opens on the American-US Airways integration.

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Oct 16 2015

Delta has increased the price of lounge passes from $50 to $59, but they’ve tucked in another change. Lounge passes are now good for only one visit — you can no longer buy a full day’s worth of visits for that price. So the real comparison is what a single visit pass used to cost, which a year ago was just $25 and then $29.

Oddly if this were about crowding they wouldn’t charge $59, they’d charge $60, since they would want the price to seem more expensive. It’s about maximizing revenue.

Not only does most of the world have better lounges, they don’t charge elites for access at all — and it’s purely an historical accident that lounges come with paid access in the U.S. to begin with.

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Oct 16 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 16 2015

Back in June I wrote about Hotelied, a new site that offers you hotel discounts based on your social media profile.

It turns out they target a broader set of people than I thought for discounts — including frequent flyer program members — and they have promotion codes that stack with these discounts. They claim an average savings per booking of $275.

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Oct 15 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 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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