While most airline have eliminated the ability to put an award “on hold” one of the more consumer-friendly features of American AAdvantage has been the offer to hold an award for up to 5 days rather than having to purchase it immediately. (Travel within a week is limited to just one day.)
Without any announcement, American appears to have reduced the allowable hold time from 5 days to 3 days.
United Airlines is launching daily service from San Francisco to Manila, and bringing back Los Angeles – Tokyo Narita and Hong Kong. They’re adding Taipei flying and are trying to expand back into mainland China.
A guest at the DoubleTree by Hilton Los Angeles – Norwalk says that she woke up from a nap to find an employee “standing at the foot of [her] bed.” She screamed and he offered the excuse, “I called, but you didn’t answer your phone.”
She reports that she called the hotel six times asking to speak to a manager but no one called her back. She called the police.
United’s flight from Zurich to Chicago O’Hare lost an emergency slide on Monday, as it floated down over a Chicago-area neighborhood prior to arrival. The Boeing 767 was discovered to have a missing slide on arrival. It landed in the backyard of a home close to the airport, damaging a roof.
British Airways is moving to revenue-based points-earning starting October 18. This applies to their own flights credited to the Executive Club program.
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.
In the spring I wrote about scammers taking over an old Singapore Airlines phone number and pretending to be Singapore Airlines when customers call. The scammers charge high fees for basic services the airline would normally provide for free, like helping with seat assignments.
It turns out there’s another variation on this scam: the agency gets Google’s search results for the airline at a specific airport changed to display their phone number.
MGM’s relationship with Hyatt ends September 30. They were partners for 10 years, and MGM had recently groused about not seeing as much value as they could they could achieve from the partnership.
Now we know what they were working on as a replacement: Marriott Bonvoy members will earn and redeem points at 17 MGM resorts starting in October, and bookings of MGM properties will be available through Marriott channels by end of year.
Like American Express, Capital One is building out its own network of lounges. Chase has their lounges in partnership with Collinson Group, which owns The Club and Priority Pass. So far, though, there’s only one Capital One lounge – at Dallas – Fort Worth airport. That opened about a year and a half ago.
Fortunately we’re getting a better sense of what’s happening with future projects.
On the outbound we flew economy. There were no business seats available, and no extra legroom coach either. It was peak season and flights were full, as many flights within Australia have been since travel re-commenced.
For this flight we’d be in Virgin Australia business, which was about $100 more than economy for the three hour flight.
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 »
