ITA Airways, the ‘new’ Alitalia, is running a fare sale between New York and London via Rome. Business class tickets are available as low as $1585 roundtrip when purchasing for travel in August and beyond. That’s roughly half the price you’d expect to pay for a non-stop, and more than $1,000 less per passenger compared to connecting itineraries on Aer Lingus and Austrian.
Airline check-in kiosks were supposed to be a money-saving investment – a classic example of automation replacing workers. But Alaska is moving to the next stage of evolution in cost-savings in the Portland airport where they’re now eliminating even kiosk jobs.
British Airways is launching ‘Avios Only’ flights – flights they aren’t selling for cash, just making available for redemption.
More airlines should offer more availability once they properly understand the value in delivering to members over the long-term. Programs should be willing to spend more with their airline on seats, to avoid killing their golden goose – in the U.S. the biggest airline loyalty programs are worth 11 figures, and generate $5 billion-plus annually in revenue. Frustrated members reduce that long-term value proposition
Fort Lauderdale airport received roughly double its previous record of rain in a single day, set in 1979 when 14.59 inches fell. (Some parts of the city received ‘only’ 15-20 inches.) While on average Fort Lauderdale receives 3 inches of rain in April, the airport surpassed its rainfall record for an entire month of April yesterday.
Before the pandemic, when Norwegian was operating the route, Delta planned to fly to Gatwick using a Boeing 757 without Delta Suites. It was totally obvious what they were doing, with a product well-matched to Norwegian’s.
This was supposed to start in May 2020, but didn’t happen because of the pandemic – and because Norwegian ceased its transatlantic flying. Now that JetBlue offers a real business class on the route, Delta has upgraded to a Boeing 767.
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.
This is my rough guide to thinking about airlines and hotels. This can be useful, because it helps to understand announcements and changes that each one makes and also for transparency as you read my own writing. Specifically, these are my rough biases or frames as I think about each of the major U.S. airlines and hotel chains. I love some things about each one, but each also has its flaws.
Overall I fly American Airlines most, but I do fly everyone, and I stay at Hyatt most and recommend Marriott as a primary ‘backup’ chain since Hyatt isn’t everywhere you might travel.
Star Alliance member TAP Air Portugal is selling business class roundtrips from New York JFK and Newark to Vienna starting at $1918, with other European destinations – like Zurich, Nice and Frankfurt – $100 to $200 more.
While right now the cheapest business class roundtrip fares are over $4000 between San Francisco and Tokyo, ZIPAIR is selling business class for just $1668. And there are great deals from Los Angeles as well.
The Irish carrier often offers inexpensive business class hops across the Pond, connecting to single cabin service in Europe. It has a codeshare partnership with American’s partner JetBlue, so they’ve sold tickets for onward connections at JFK on JetBlue. It was convenient, then, to have Aer Lingus in JFK terminal 5 co-located with JetBlue. With U.S. immigration pre-clearance in Ireland you get off the flight in New York as though it were domestic, and don’t even need to clear security to connect.
That’s going away, since starting April 27 Aer Lingus will be moving to JFK’s terminal 7 which means changing terminals for connections to JetBlue and therefore also re-clearing security.
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 »
