I won’t have a lot to say on the announcement of Southwest’s planned acquisition of Airtran. I’ll leave that to the Cranky Fliers and Dan Webbs of the world, it’s a little outside of my area of interest — I try not to fly Southwest or Airtran and have little interest in their mileage programs. Still, it’s hard not to see this as a bg deal. This is obviously bigger than Southwest’s previous acquisitions.. Morris Air, run by Dave Neeleman who would go on to found JetBlue once his non-compete was up, and Muse Air which was founded by Southwest’s original President Lamar Muse and his son (and dubbed ‘revenge air’ after Muse’s ouster of Southwest and attempts to compete across Southwest’s key routes). One expects Airtran to begin aligning policies with Southwest once the…
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American Express and Continental Lounge Access and Points Transfer Relationship to End September 30, 2011
[Details in this post are no longer current.] American Express has announced that their relationship with Continental will end on September 30, 2011. Currently, the US Membership Rewards program offers the ability to transfer points into Continental Onepass. And the American Express Platinum and Centurion lounge benefit includes access to Continental clubs (when flying Continental same-day). Both of those benefits will cease. Two months ago when American Express added US Airways to its roster of lounges providing access to Platinum and Centurion members, I said that it meant the Continental relationship was dead in the water. When the United-Continental merger was announced, the end of the Amex relationship was almost a foregone conclusion. In many ways, United exists today in order to support Chase’s credit card business. The issuer of the United Visa provided debtor-in-possession…
Aegean Airlines — the New and Easiest Path to Star Alliance Gold Status
Lucky and Kiwi Flyer have already written about the great, low qualification requirements for Star Alliance Gold status with Aegean Airlines which has just joined Star Alliance. I’ve previously written about the easiest ways to secure Star Alliance Gold status, Turkish Miles & Smiles requires 40,000 miles in 12 months to make Star Alliance Gold. That status is valid for 2 years. And — as long as you don’t reside in Turkey — requalifying only takes 25.000 status miles in the first year or 37.500 status miles over two years. Asiana Club…Star Gold is earned after flying 40,000 qualifying miles within two years, and status lasts for two years. If you earn the status quickly enough, it can actually last for a full four years before dropping down and having to requalify again. And of…
British Airways First Class, London-Toronto under Strike Conditions: A Continuation of Cathay & British Airways First Class, Philippines and Macau, a Presidential Suite, and the Fat Duck Restaurant
Here are the previous posts from this trip report: Prelude Desperately Making it to Toronto, Sheraton Toronto Airport Toronto – Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific First Class The Wing lounge and Hong Kong – Manila, Cathay Pacific First Class Intercontinental Manila Presidential Suite Manila – Cebu and the Hilton Cebu Resort Philippine Cooking Class Cebu – Manila and Return to the Interconinental Manila Presidential Suite Manila – Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific First Class and on to Macau via Turbojet Westin Resort Macau Fernando’s, Beijing Kitchen, and the City of Dreams Macau – Hong Kong via Turbojet and Hong Kong – London, Cathay Pacific First Class Waldorf Hilton Hotel, London Lunch at the Fat Duck Restaurant Heathrow was a ghost town when we arrived. BA might have been covering all their London City flights (such as those…
US Airways 90 Days of Silver Status for Ticket Purchase
US Airways is offering free silver status for 90 days. Registration required by August 15. Must purchase a non-refundable ticket at usairways.com for travel only on US Airways/US Airways Express and only for travel in the United States. Ticket purchase required by August 15 for travel beginning by September 15. Status will take up to 7 days to be reflected in your account after purchasing a ticket. Members who were elite members in 2009 or who have had complimentary or trial US Airways elite status within the past two years aren’t eligible. US Airways Silver status is of course also Star Alliance Silver, which gets you a free checked baggage allowance. (Via One Mile at a Time)
Spirit to Charge for Large Carry-on Bags
Via Upgrade: Travel Better, Spirit Air is introducing carry-on baggage fees. They say they’ll measure the size of carry-ons, and those deemed too big to fit under the seat will be charged a fee for use of the overhead. Presumably someone with a small enough carryon could still use the overhead space for free, even though the narrative is that it’s a fee for overhead space, in reality it’s a fee based on size of carry-on. Spirit claims they’ve more than offset this by lowering their airfares, but anyone who understands airline pricing understands that this isn’t a meaningful statement. Just another reason why Spirit is the most customer-unfriendly airline on the planet. Meanwhile, anyone who wants can have their checked baggage fees waived for a year on United, Continental, and others.
Congress Wants to Shrink Your Carryon!
It’s bad enough the government is concerned with what’s in your carryon (liquids). Now CrankyFlier points to H. R. 2870: To standardize and clarify the dimensions of carry-on baggage and personal items on air carriers. The proposed legislation will limit carry-on bag dimensions to no more than 22 inches by 18 inches by 10 inches for a total of 50 inches. It would also make the TSA reinstall those obnoxious bag sizers on the security machines Cranky points out that most airlines already permit only 45 total inches. But a handful of carriers do permit larger carryons — Southwest, for instance, is more generous allowing proposed maximum of 50 inches, and Airtran allows a full 10% more than that. The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) issued a press release encouraging the government to get involved.…
Lufthansa First Class: Ho Chi Minh City to Bangkok
9:10 pm Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (SGN) to Bangkok, Thailand (BKK) Lufthansa Flight 773 First Class Seats 83H, 83K Duration: 1h 30m Boeing 747-400 461 miles traveled Since we had a late flight, I asked about 6pm checkout but was told that would incur a half-night’s charge. But they extended 5pm checkout complimentarily, and offered that we could enjoy the evening h’or douerves in the lounge rather than leaving for the airport straight away, but we we decided we’ve rather be off. We caught a cab to the airport and despite significant traffic (it took better than an hour) the cost was ~ US$8. We entered the terminal just as Lufthansa was about to open its counters, all of the staff were huddled in a meeting while passengers began to queue. It was rather…
Connecting Flight, Tokyo – Hong Kong in ANA’s Club Asia
We arrived at Narita right on time around 3:25pm. After a quick transit security screening we headed up towards the ANA lounges. We weren’t given a lounge pass at check-in, and were continuing in two-cabin business class on ANA subsidiary Air Japan’s 6:40pm Hong Kong flight. I decided to walk towards the First Class lounge, even though ANA treats their lounges as departure rather than arrivals lounges and thus technically I would only be entitled to use the business class lounge. I approached the woman standing outside the lounge to greet passengers, ostensibly looking for directions, and showed her my first class boarding pass stub from my arriving flight. That was the only thing I showed her, she saw first class on it, and indicated I was in the right place! She escorted my to…
Air Traffic Delays Are Awful, Everything Else is Worse
Economic growth in general and deregulation in particular have brought about lower real airline ticket prices and substantial increases in passenger traffic. Infrastructure hasn’t kept pace and air traffic control hasn’t kept pace. And so we face congested airports and airspace. This frustrates travelers, who live in a world of tradeoffs but take what they have as given and long for what they’ve given up. Richard Posner is one such business traveler. And the usually sober, sometimes brilliant, and certainly prolific judge and scholar offers up an unusually misguided rant on why he believes “airline service is so bad” over at the Becker-Posner Blog, Becker rebuts. Posner lays out a myriad of unsupported gripes and mixes in blatantly incorrect facts, leading him to circle around some rather silly notions about re-regulating the aviation industry. Becker…
