On Wednesday morning, a Southwest Airlines passenger on a cross country flight departing from Oakland hadn’t finished her laundry and dried “her clothes by hanging them on the window shades.”
The airline responded to the customer who shared this on social media, saying “Orange you glad it wasn’t underwear?”
While neither American nor United targeted disaffected SkyMiles elite, who felt they were being fired as the airlines employees told complaining customers to stop being poor, CNBC’s Leslie Josephs asked during the question and answer period of the earnings call whether United has seen an uptick in status match requests.
After Delta’s evisceration of elite qualification rules for next year, announcing the end of earning status by miles and flights flown; moving entirely to dollars spent; and increasing the amount of spending required for status substantially, as well as severely restricting access by premium credit card customers to its lounges, Delta acknowledged that they had moved ‘too quickly’ by ‘pulling the band aid off all at once’ and promised to moderate their changes for the coming year.
Oakland’s airport took a mere five months to build. Now adding 16 gates could take decades, if it’s ever able to happen.
Today Southwest Airlines controls the vast majority of traffic at the airport that was dedicated by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 and was the site of Amelia Earhart’s final trip departure. It hasn’t seen investment in fifteen years. And locals are going to use all of the levers of process to make sure it doesn’t see any, any time soon.
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During the United Airlines third quarter earnings call the carrier announced that they would not be making changes to their elite program. Normally the lack of changes aren’t noteworthy, but it’s been a big question from members since Delta has announced big changes and even in the face of backlash has merely suggested they rolled changes out too quickly not that the changes themselves were a mistake.
The new Denver lounge is in terminal C between gate 30 and 32. It’s 6,000 square feet with seating for 114 people, and is open 4:30 a.m. – 11:30 p.m.
Prior to the Durbin amendment, 76% of checking accounts were free. That declined to 39% in 2012 after the rollout of the Durbin amendment and recovered slightly to 46% in 2022. Cramming down the debit revenue stream for banks will certainly benefit retailers, but we’ve seen that it isn’t paid for entirely by banks but by consumers through higher fees.
Hilton Houston Post Oak by the Galleria has backed out of hosting the “Seize the Moment US Campaign for Palestinian Rights National Conference” planned for October 27 – 29, which was set to be keynoted by Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American congresswoman and member of ‘the squad’ known for her opposition to Israel.
The airline used to brag about its involvement with the Kariba project in Zimbabwe. Bloomberg‘s Matt Levine calls the folks involved “ESG Consultant[s] But Evil.”
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 »
