New York City Mayor Eric Adams was confronted by a woman boarding an American Airlines flight from Miami to New York on Monday. His Honor was seated in an exit row middle seat, and the woman approached him, first asking whether he was in fact the mayor – and then began to launch into a wide-ranging tirade.
The anti-Israel activist, headed to New York as well, recorded herself lambasting the mayor over a litany of issues.
Last month a Chase Ultimate Rewards member transferred their points to United, in order to book an award that showed as available at United.com, but wasn’t really available. United wouldn’t send his points back to Chase, and he complained to the Department of Transportation that this was an unfair and deceptive practice. They needed 193,000 more miles than they had in their account. United’s website suggested they buy the miles. They transferred the points in from Chase Ultimate Rewards instead. The award space for business class travel on EVA Air from Chicago to Singapore via Taipei turned out to be phantom and unbookable. The website errored out after they transferred the points. While the space still showed up online, a phone agent said the space wasn’t available and also that they couldn’t send their points…
The federal government has issued a final rule for how airlines disclose their fees, and requiring prompt refund of fees when they don’t provide the promised service.
It largely will not change how most passengers experience airlines most of the time. Airlines already disclose their fees, and generally provide refunds for services they don’t provide. There will be a stronger requirement, though, to refund checked bag fees for long-delayed and lost bags.
A year after acquiring Mr & Mrs Smith, Hyatt has integrated the luxury booking platform into its World of Hyatt loyalty program, allowing members to earn and redeem points at over 700 properties, expanding their coverage to 20 new countries and enabling additional benefits like double dipping on American AAdvantage miles.
American Airlines reduced the number of flight attendants on board its widebody and premium cross-country planes during the pandemic. They were trying to save money any way they could, and there wasn’t as much service to offer back then. Travel returned, and service came back, but American has kept operating with fewer people to serve meals and drinks.
The union hates that – it’s fewer jobs, and more work – and it’s not great for customers either. Nearly four years later, an arbitrator has just hard the union’s grievance over the change.
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JetBlue Airlines stock was down nearly 19% today on its earnings report – on a day when the broader market, including Delta and United, were up.
In February, American Airlines announced that tickets booked through many third parties would no longer earn miles starting May 1 – but they wouldn’t announce the list of sites whose bookings would become ineligible to earn miles until late April.
Lufthansa first class appears to have gone from 121,000 to 154,000 miles each way per person – meaning that a saver award now costs 308,000 miles roundtrip. That’s a 27% increase. And these are tough awards to book, because Lufthansa only makes them available to United’s program members within a few days of departure.
Meanwhile ANA first class from the Midwest and East Coast appears to have jumped to an eye-popping 242,000 miles – an instantaneous doubling in price.
American is encouraging customers to prepay for bags with a discount (of course you may wind up prepaying bags and then not checking as many – overpaying for your bags)
Another way they’re encouraging this is speeding up bag drop for prepaid bags. You can just scan your boarding pass and out will pop the bag tags. Much faster than the current process!
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 »
