The American Airlines pilots union wants to exempt its pilots from the TSA’s nude-o-scopes because they’re, well, stupid. And they are, though what I object to is the idea that pilots would get exempted but not the rest of us. Now, they’d justify special exemptions for pilots because of the frequency with which they go through the backscatter machines and the chance that repeated exposure could have detrimental effects. But certainly frequent flyers go through them as often or more often. And of course radiation risk really just applies to one type of device (backscatter) and not the other (millimeter wave). But at least the Allied Pilots Association is against the nude-o-scopes, the Airlines Pilots Association, which represents pilots at most US carriers, actually favors them. I’d love for someone to figure out why?
Free Wifi for the Holidays is Back (with a lot more widespread availability than last year)
Airtran, Delta, and Virgin America are teaming up with Google to offer free wifi onboard from November 20 through January 2nd. These are among the most wifi-enabled carriers (I believe Airtran’s entire fleet is fully equipped) and the price is certainly right. I’ve come to value the connectivity tremendously, especially on long flights. At four and a half hours I thought the advertised $20 on my Alaska Airlines flight on Friday would be worthwhile to buy myself back some extra productivity. It was a pleasant surprise to see that I was actually only charged $5, even without Google subsidy! Now, if they’d do corporate sponsorship year-round of free wifi I’d actually switch my web broswer to Google Chrome which this deal is supposed to be promoting. Still, it’ll be interested to see when onboard wifi…
USA Today on Award Booking Services
I spoke with Laura Bly yesterday morning before heading to the airport, and today she’s written about my award booking service and about Lucky’s in her USA Today blog. She wanted me to differentiate our services, explain how mine is different or better and candidly I told her I’d never say a negative thing about his and that I often recommend people to him when I happen to have a full plate of clients, in the midst of travel, and working on deadline for my real job. And I offer that recommendation wholeheartedly. Of course I think I’m pretty good at this as my happy clients attest.. In the piece the author is a bit hard on herself, she managed business class awards to South America on her preferred dates but didn’t realize that if…
Some Truly Pedantic Complaints from the Last Week of Flying
Alaska’s “midcon” meal service is truly subpar. Houston-Seattle is 1,874 miles. It departs at 6:25pm. The flight is scheduled at 4 hours and 45 minutes. First class gets a ‘snack’ — on Friday is was mushroom ravioli (5 large pieces) with a salad on the same plate. No meat or fish. No side(s). No dessert. Not acceptable for first class service. On the other hand, the flight was wifi enabled (well worth it to me to catch up on days worth of work), and I had only paid $129 for the one-way ticket, confirmed upgrade at booking with an MVP Gold Guest Upgrade certificate.. Usually I just complain about never seeming to get pre-departure beverages on American. Last night I added something a little more substantive to my usual complaint: On United that would have…
Randy Petersen Retires from Flyertalk
Last night in Seattle, Randy announced to the Flyertalk moderators in attendance that he was going to be stepping down from Flyertalk at the end of the year. It was an emotional half hour where he shared his remembrances of individuals and events over the twelve and a half years since he started the project, and in the three years since he sold the website to Internet Brands. He’ll stay on through December 31 and posted this morning that he’s working with Internet Brands on the transition plan for the management of the community. Flyertalk’s missydarlin pushed me to offer a toast to Randy on behalf of the 58 of us at dinner last night and so in the middle of a Vietnamese restaurant I stood up on a chair on offered my thanks and…
Breakfast of Champions at the Flyertalk Moderator Meeting in Seattle
American’s New Car and Hotel Awards
American Airlines has introduced new car and hotel awards. This isn’t how I prefer to use my miles (read: premium cabin international airline awards) but it’s still an interesting development for a few reasons. First, more options with your miles are always better. Second, though you could always book car and hotel via the AA Vacations site you could only pay for the car/hotel portion with miles and not the air. This offering separates out these different components. Third and most importantly, the miles value for these offerings seems to be better through American than through similar competitor programs, and they’re offering better redemption values for elite members (and better redemption values for higher-level elites than for lower-level ones). Delta has had a similar offering and considering how difficult it can be to use Skymiles…
An Amazing Night at the Frequent Traveler Awards
The first annual Frequent Traveler Award ceremony was held yesterday in Houston, and I had the great honor to be a part of it — as Chair of the Nominations Committee and as presenter of the Hotel Program of the Year award in each of three regions (Americas, Europe and Africa, Middle East & Asia-Pacific). Throughout the evening the ballroom was packed We had about 250 people in all, equally divided between representatives of the industry and the traveling public. The trophies were all lined up, ready to distribute And here I am doing just that: While each of the presenters waited to come up, we sat at the corner of the stage in Continental’s new business class seat Full results from the evening are available on the awards’ website, and the full Powerpoint presentation…
50,000 Mile Signup Bonus for British Airways Visa, and No Foreign Currency Transaction Fees
For those who missed out on last year’s amazing, incredible, 100,000-mile signup bonus for the British Airways Visa (the first true megabonus offer, pre-dating the 100k bonus from Citibank and American), they’ve come out with a new 50,000-mile signup bonus for the card. Well worth doing in its own right. 50,000 miles for a $75 annual fee is a pretty good deal. And what’s more, they’ve actually improved the card. Chase introduced the elimination of foreign currency transaction fees with their Priority Club Visa. That was a really interesting innovation, but earning 1 Priority Club point per dollar is just not an attractive reward proposition. Then they rolled out the benefit with the new Hyatt Visa, and that became a really worthwhile card as a result — a valuable reward currency in Hyatt Gold Passport…
Double Continental EQMs on COPA
A reader sends me to this offer for double Continental Airlines elite qualifying miles through the end of the year for flights on COPA. Offer is valid for OnePass members who book and travel with Copa Airlines from November 1 to December 31, 2010. OnePass number must be included in the reservation. This offer is valid only for all Copa and Copa Airlines Colombia operated flights. Offer is not applicable on code-share flights operated by other carriers. Eligible classes of service are C,D,Y,H,K,N,B,V,U,Q,I,S,T,L,O, and A. End of year qualifying run to Latin America, anyone?
