This is one of the cheapest award sales ever. Air France KLM’s Flying Blue, which is a transfer partner of all of the major bank currencies, is offering transatlantic business class awards starting at 13,500 points each way.
While American shed highly unprofitable flying, they had been using pretty much all available windows for swing gates, gates that could be used for flying by any carrier. And that blocked others from significant expansion.
With their recent moves opening up the field I speculated that could mean Delta making good on its promise to create a focus city in Austin. They’ve been willing to stick by unprofitable flying like Seattle, buoyed by strong performance of their interior hubs and their lucrative American Express deal, making a bet on long-term performance.
Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan is tempting fate over another Christmas meltdown promising on Thursday that “it will never happen again.”
Bob Jordan should really “go outside, turn around three times and spit” so that he doesn’t “tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing.”
She was frustrated with how long it was taking to get from her hotel to the airport. So she grabbed the driver’s phone and threw it out of the car. The driver stopped the car and got out to retrieve the phone. So she jumped into the driver’s seat and drove off.
Avianca LifeMiles is a popular Star Alliance frequent flyer program for U.S. members because they sell miles inexpensively on a regular basis, and because you can transfer points into their program from several different credit card currencies.
They have generally reasonable redemption pricing with no fuel surcharges, though getting customer service when things go wrong can be challenging at times.
TSA has often failed to catch over 90% of contraband going through checkpoints, there have been tens of thousands of misconduct complaints against the agency’s staff, and yet we haven’t seen repeats in the U.S. of 9/11 largely because there aren’t as many threats as we think, they’re harder to carry out than we imagine, and because we’ve reinforced cockpit doors and passengers would no longer sit docilely by as an attack was carried out.
United Airlines is pulling back on meal service in domestic first class. Starting January 1, United Airlines will only serve meals up front on flights of 900 miles or longer.
Kinect Air sells open legs on private flights, and lets you schedule private flights online, all without a membership fee or even registering first. They’re being touted as a company that lets you fly private for $111. But the real innovation is online booking and confirmation, and working with operators of less expensive aircraft.
Cathay Pacific just announced the return of first class service to New York starting March 31, 2024, with their flights CX830 and CX831 offering the Boeing 777-300ER forward cabin.
What’s more, first class award space is available using Cathay Pacific’s Asia Miles program.
Qatar has one of the best business class product in the world in its ‘QSuites’ that offer doors and movable partitions that allow two and even four passengers to travel together in their own space. Their QSuite is a fantastic hard product, and service and food in the air are outstanding.
A month ago award space opened wide up. It went away, but on a handful of routes it is back in a big way.
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 »
