Before the pandemic, when Norwegian was operating the route, Delta planned to fly to Gatwick using a Boeing 757 without Delta Suites. It was totally obvious what they were doing, with a product well-matched to Norwegian’s.
This was supposed to start in May 2020, but didn’t happen because of the pandemic – and because Norwegian ceased its transatlantic flying. Now that JetBlue offers a real business class on the route, Delta has upgraded to a Boeing 767.
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.
This is my rough guide to thinking about airlines and hotels. This can be useful, because it helps to understand announcements and changes that each one makes and also for transparency as you read my own writing. Specifically, these are my rough biases or frames as I think about each of the major U.S. airlines and hotel chains. I love some things about each one, but each also has its flaws.
Overall I fly American Airlines most, but I do fly everyone, and I stay at Hyatt most and recommend Marriott as a primary ‘backup’ chain since Hyatt isn’t everywhere you might travel.
Star Alliance member TAP Air Portugal is selling business class roundtrips from New York JFK and Newark to Vienna starting at $1918, with other European destinations – like Zurich, Nice and Frankfurt – $100 to $200 more.
While right now the cheapest business class roundtrip fares are over $4000 between San Francisco and Tokyo, ZIPAIR is selling business class for just $1668. And there are great deals from Los Angeles as well.
The Irish carrier often offers inexpensive business class hops across the Pond, connecting to single cabin service in Europe. It has a codeshare partnership with American’s partner JetBlue, so they’ve sold tickets for onward connections at JFK on JetBlue. It was convenient, then, to have Aer Lingus in JFK terminal 5 co-located with JetBlue. With U.S. immigration pre-clearance in Ireland you get off the flight in New York as though it were domestic, and don’t even need to clear security to connect.
That’s going away, since starting April 27 Aer Lingus will be moving to JFK’s terminal 7 which means changing terminals for connections to JetBlue and therefore also re-clearing security.
Sri Lanka is one of the three largest recipients of lending from China. Their basic problem is spending more money than they have, and then limiting further what they have through regulation. The government there decided farms needed to switch to organic practices, banning chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which led to lower yields without being offset by higher prices. Food shortages followed.
The government needs to curtail its spending and devalue its currency. Part of that means reducing subsidies of inefficient businesses, that have been kept as corrupt enterprises to benefit powerful elites.
The New York Times runs a trend piece on women traveling abroad to find romance. They say that dating in the United States is awful, and meeting men abroad is much better – that people marry later so the dating pool isn’t limited over 30; that men are more serious; that potential mates are more adventurous (while in the U.S. all men are the same archetypes).
The first thing to know about any trend piece is that there isn’t really a trend, although the pieces themselves might create one. All you need is a little anecdata.
Southwest Airlines used to carry more local passengers to and from Denver, while United had more passengers total given their big connecting hub there. Now United actually carries more Denver locals, too – a result of offering more total seats in the market (they’ve replaced a bunch of regional jets with mainline flying). There’s no reason to make disingenuous advertising claims when they actually have a killer argument to make. Yet somehow they fail to do so?
One United Airlines customer brought cupcakes for the airline’s employees to celebrate crossing the one million mile threshold, earning lifetime Gold status with the carrier (and extending his status to a partner). He wasn’t looking for the airline to do something for him, he did something for the people at the airline who have helped him along his journey.
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 »
