British Airways flight 165 from London Heathrow to Tel Aviv turned around while on final approach on Wednesday, as Hamas launched a rocket attack at the city. The carrier had been operating a single daytime flight, allowing crew to immediately return to London, however has now decided to suspend operations to Israel.
Passengers on the flight took a 9 hour 47 minute flight to nowhere, and options to fly into the country are increasingly limited.
The FAA is considering a rule to treat public charters the same way as large commercial airlines, rewriting rules going back 30 years. This would mean that co-pilots for carriers like JSX and the proposed SkyWest Charter could only employ co-pilots with 1,500 hours of training (whether in a tethered hot air balloon or otherwise) and JSX wouldn’t be able to fly from private terminals.
JSX emailed all of their customers asking them to comment on the FAA’s proposed rulemaking. Over 20,000 people filed comments to oppose these changes. Does that matter?
Emirates as a company hasn’t prioritized loyalty and so the head of loyalty optimizes within that framework. Revenue management won’t release award inventory to the program to any meaningful degree, so Skywards is stuck promoting using their miles as cash towards flights on the airline and cannot buy excess inventory to sell at a profitable discount through the frequency program.
While coffee in the air faces too many challenges to be really enjoyable, it’s perhaps the most important tool in the toolkit for solving inflight problems – and it can keep a flight from becoming miserable.
A roundup of 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.
The flight discounts are available on one-way bookings not just roundtrip. So consider booking paid travel one way, award the other. Fly for.. $1?
Air Canada has suspended a pilot who went on a social media posting rampage against Israel and Jews. The pilot posted to his since-deleted Instagram account in uniform draped in a Palestinian flag and stating, Israel – Hitler is proud of you – terrorist state,” “F- you Israel. Burn in hell” and “Keep the world clean” as a caption to eliminating an Israeli flag.
One passenger showed up at New York JFK and bought tickets for everyone looking to travel to Israel with a notice to join the reserves. The country has activated 360,000 civilian reservists, representing around 4% of the entire population.
Reportedly he paid for 250 seats on an El Al Boeing 787-9 which holds 282 passengers.
Sometimes there’s no avoiding it, and you need to put more than one airline in the same reservation. That’s supposed to be the point of airline alliances, and joint ventures are supposed to work even better, though in practice they rarely do.
And sometimes it’s cheaper to book a codeshare or partner itinerary. Just know that this savings isn’t ‘free’ but rather comes at a customer service cost if there’s a schedule change or if your plans change.
A roundup of 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.
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 »
