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.
New U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) got frustrated with United Airlines and tweeted out his boarding pass, complete with reservation number and MileagePlus number.
Vance had blasted United Airlines for something that airline passengers are frustrated with all the time – the failure to update customers in a timely manner. In this case the plane hadn’t yet boarded at the scheduled boarding time, but was still showing as though it would.
A passenger off of a transatlantic flight to New York has shared what happened when they were accidentally directed straight out of JFK airport – instead of being directed to immigration.
They were sent a note by the airline that they had to return to New York JFK airport the next day and given a specific time to do so in order to present themselves to the U.S. government.
Aircraft manufacturer Airbus tweeted on Wednesday evening that American Airlines lost their luggage. Someone had flown into Washington, D.C. where Airbus has its headquarters, and the airline failed to deliver their bags – or to send the bags out to the customer when they said to expect them. American Airlines is the largest operator of Airbus aircraft.
American Airlines has eliminated its ‘saver’ and ‘anytime’ awards. Now when you’re using American’s miles to fly American Airlines, the only option is web special awards, which have been renamed Flight Awards. Nothing else changes at this time, though a number of things flow from this decision.
Most awards were already web specials. There’s a new award chart, but it doesn’t provide very much information. Overall I consider the change negative, but mostly just recognizing past devaluations rather than representing a new devaluation.
American Airlines has eliminated Saver and Anytime awards, and replaced those award charts with a new ‘starting from’ pricing chart for American Airlines flights. There are no changes to partner awards or upgrade awards. And since most American awards were already dynamically-priced web specials, in practice little changes at all.
Here are the full details.
The flight attendant’s vaping is an issue because it’s illegal and subject to fine, not because it’s inherently problematic the way smoking on board would be (exposing other passengers to the smoke).
Most of the time cabin crew are ‘unmonitored’ and while there are procedures, in practice there’s quite a wide latitude for deviation.
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.
If any pandemic precautions were to last it was my hope that actually keeping planes clean would be at the top of the list. At least clear out seat back pockets of trash from the passenger on the flight before you! But with the return to normal has come cleaning cost cuts, too, and prioritizing turning planes quickly during connections rather than cleaning between flights (and, oddly, not doing a proper cleaning job overnight either).
The Sheraton Damascus is being used as a prison for the country’s business elite where the government extracts payments in exchange for their freedom. This has been an ongoing use for the hotel property for the past two and a half years.
Hotel guests are told they have to “deposit US dollars into the central bank in order to help stabilise the Syrian lira, or they would not be released.”
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 »
