Style matters. Detail matters. Often it’s not even a matter of cost, it’s a matter of having a culture where 80% isn’t good enough, a culture of not being lazy and paying attention to what seems like the small things. You have to buy dishware anyway, don’t just find dishes and check the box. Find the right dishes.
Things appear to be getting worse again. There’s reportedly a backlog of 80,000 – 100,000 passport requests to be processed, and the estimated time given to process when paying for expedited service has slipped to nearly two months.
Frequent flyer miles have an amazing characteristic. They cost about three quarters of a cent to produce while people value them at twice that much. The more you produce, the more you profit, so you go around generating as many miles as you can. But now there are too many miles chasing too few seats, airlines have to raise the number of miles required for the seats, and the miles aren’t worth so much.
News came out over the weekend about a United Airlines Boeing 777-200 that took off from Maui’s airport back on December 18 – and nearly dropping to the ocean. Despite flight 1722 to Maui climbing to 2,200 feet and then plunging to within 775 feet of impact, news of the incident had not been reported.
In addition to questions around what happened, whether it was wind shear in a significant storm or whether the pilots raised their flaps too far, and possibly became disoriented, there’s been mystery around why no one on the plane – out of more than 200 passengers – posted about the incident to social media.
While it’s been an open secret that Air India has been about to purchase nearly 500 aircraft in an order split between Boeing and Airbus, the Airbus order was announced… but we were waiting for the order from Boeing. The reason why the two orders weren’t announced together is now clear. It awaited President Biden so that he could be a part of the announcement.
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.
They’ve created a no annual fee World Elite Mastercard that makes sense for those loyal to the Choice brand to get. Holding the card makes sense. I just wish it were more rewarding for ongoing spend.
Back in December, American Airlines shared that they planned to eliminated fixed-price awards in 2023, and make all award travel on American Airlines ‘web special’ variable pricing.
We now have a window into when this change will occur.
One of Hilton’s most aspirational properties, the Conrad Maldives, has standard free night award availability nearly every day for the rest of the year (through December 20, 2023). That’s not normally the case.
Australia in business class is one of the toughest frequent flyer awards out there. It’s a long flight, people pay for business class seats, and there aren’t that many ways of getting there through many frequent flyer programs. If you want to use United miles, for instance, you often have to travel through Asia – or pay triple the miles.
Right now Qantas is making quite a bit of business class award space available on its Dallas Fort Worth – Sydney flight over the summer in the U.S.
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 »
