United, Delta, and American Airlines all have airport lounges for premium customers. Alaska Airlines has them, too. Southwest Airlines doesn’t offer lounges.
These lounges are also a huge perk of premium credit cards, which are a lucrative business for airlines. Southwest is competing with one hand tied behind its back placing cards in consumer wallets without lounges.
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The New York Times embarrasses themselves arguing that rewards credit cards drive inequality. The Times doesn’t understand the issue beyond retail lobbyist talking points.
The AFA-CWA union, which represents United flight attendants, is reminding its members that under the Railway Labor Act it is illegal to engage in ‘self help’ (not just striking, but unilateral efforts to hurt the company) before being released from negotiations by the National Mediation Board.
AFA-CWA tells cabin crew that they cannot coordinate refusing to pick up trips, call for their colleagues to “work to rule” or to refuse to perform any duties, as well as “refusing to charge customers for buy-on-board products.”
For Rent Day, the first of each month, Bilt Rewards offers regular promotions like double points and transfer bonuses to its travel partners. For the upcoming month Rent Day offers start early to coincide with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And they have (7) offers overall.
Competition in the rewards credit card market has gotten so intense that I believe the Sapphire Reserve card – the ‘it’ product when it was introduced just six years ago – has become passé. It was the most rewarding in the marketplace, and now merely a good card that I think has been surpassed in its rewards-earning.
But what if that card threw in a full United Club membership at no extra cost?
A flight attendant discovered her partner traveled from Miami to Phoenix to meet another woman. His only sent a few texts a day and he blocked her from seeing his Instagram stories. But he forgot to block her friends.
So she removed him from her flight benefits.
During a flight from Houston to Denver on November 16, a distressed woman caused chaos by resisting airline staff, leading to confrontations among passengers and religious outbursts from others.
I’ve run into passengers seated ahead of me who believe that the space underneath their seat belongs to them. They use both the space under the seat in front of them and the space underneath them. But that is not how this works. That is not how any of this works!
Even more problematic is someone that believes they can take the space underneath the feet of the passenger in front of them for storage. Then the passenger one row ahead can’t put their feet on the ground!
A passenger was spotted wearing a plastic bag over their head on a Southwest Airlines flight. The reasons behind this choice were not immediately clear. Was it a personal health precaution, a statement, or simply a quirky travel habit?
Coming out of the pandemic, some passengers are creative in their methods to feel safe while traveling. However, it’s crucial to consider the effectiveness and safety of such methods! A plastic bag poses significant risks!
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 »
