A pregnant woman showed up at her hotel reserved at Booking.com to find it was no longer a hotel – it had been converted to a homeless shelter. And the online travel agency’s customer service had no hoots to give.
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.
United marketed the end of change fees as permanent, but in the airline industry permanent means for now, until we change our mind. It appears they’re experimenting with bringing back change fees.
Virgin Atlantic is offering a 50% rebate when redeeming their points for award travel on their own flights by November 7 for travel through March 25, 2023. While there are ways to get more value out of this than it first appears, simple business class redemptions – even with 50% of your points back – aren’t such a good deal.
Employees at Philadelphia’s airport refer to the place as Filthadelphia. Birds are known to roam freely there.
It’s still surprising to just see a raccoon pop up at an OTG retail shop and help themselves to a snack while passengers are buying food at the self-checkout. Yet that’s just what happened last week.
United is expanding at Chicago O’Hare and increasingly American is the number two carrier there. Years ago the city had a sprawling international route network, selling flights to Moscow and Delhi. Now American’s flying from Chicago is mostly domestic.
At an internal meeting earlier in the month led by Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja, an employee asked about the draw down in Chicago flying and in particular why American isn’t flying from Chicago to Hawaii.
Citibank is surveying potential changes to its premium American AAdvantage credit card which comes with Admirals Club lounge membership. Generally they appear to be looking to raise the card’s $450 annual fee, and begin charging for authorized user cards (since those cards also grant lounge access). In the surveys I shared they’re playing around with partner offers – such as statement credits from Hyatt, Lyft, Avis, and DoorDash – to see whether those help them raise the card’s annual fee even higher.
Buried in the notes about benefits the card would offer for additional Loyalty Points after $40,000 and $90,000 spend in a year is a reference to a higher number of Loyalty Points associated with American Airlines Gold and Platinum status.
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.
Two weeks ago Paypal introduced language into its terms and conditions that allowed them to withdraw $2500 from your account for each time they believed you “promot[ed] misinformation” or you sent, posted or published “messages, content, or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing, or objectionable.”
After an online backlash they pulled the language from their update. They called it a mistake, but once the internet outrage died down they brought it back.
The notion that airlines even sell seats with six extra inches of legroom on many domestic flights, as the President suggests, is fanciful. Three inches is far more common. Airline passengers skew quite well off, relatively few marginalized Americans fly regularly. It seems odd to suggest that they are disproportionately harmed (or, for that matter, that they are buying up to extra legroom seats).
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 »
