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.
A passenger on a JetBlue flight stole a phone charger from an agent at the gate on Friday. They didn’t take the gate agent’s phone – just the charger.
The agent realized their charger was gone, boarded the flight, and announced at the flight isn’t going anywhere until the thief returns it. If the passenger doesn’t come forward, they’ll pull security tapes and figure out who it was anyway. It’s better to fess up!
Southwest Airlines melted down over the holidays, affecting around two million travelers and costing the airline around $825 million. And now the airline gets the Saturday Night Live treatment.
SNL cast promote the new, reformed Southwest airlines. First on the agenda is upgrading their IT to 2008 Dell computers.
American Airlines has increasingly become a domestic airline. Even though it’s the largest airline, it’s less of a global airline even than it was prior to the pandemic. They don’t fly as much to Europe and they haven’t built back much of their flying to Asia.
In fact they no longer consider Los Angeles to be their gateway to Asia, and a lot of their flying to secondary cities in Europe has been halted. That’s meant a real reduction in activity in Philadelphia, where those Europe flights were based, since domestic connections were optimized to support those transatlantic trips as well.
The good new is that – for now at least – American Airlines does appear to be running better than it has been in four years. But I’ve heard flight attendants talking about ‘work to rule’ and they and pilots are facing protracted contract negotiations. Hopefully this lasts.
There’s actually no rule in the U.S. against drinking your own alcohol on board an aircraft. Instead, the rule is that you are only permitted to drink alcohol on board that is served to you by a flight attendant.
The Baymont By Wyndham Des Moines North was an unlicensed hotel, despite being branded as part of a global chain and being owned by McKinney, Texas-based Relianse Global.
On December 22, hotel inspectors found “trash, pests, nonworking smoke detectors and a “sex toy” in the microwave oven of a guest room.” And the property has been given a government license to operate.
In this video you can see two passengers brawl at Fort Lauderdale airport baggage claim. Maybe you’re thinking, ‘just another weekday in South Florida’ and that’s fair. Because that’s apparently what the Broward County Sheriff’s Office must have been thinking, responding to the situation by walking by and not get involved.
You can now book ANA first class awards from June through end of schedule in and out of San Francisco. Details on how to do this are below. While at least three seats are most common, I’m seeing as many as five award seats open on some flights which is almost unprecedented.
When Alaska Airlines introduced its new, unified award chart that replaced the separate charts for each airline partner on its website a month ago, it was a loss for transparency.
By sharing less information about award prices, they can increase those prices without telling consumers. They had previously committed to share changes with members in advance. But as long as the ‘starting from’ price doesn’t change, they can increase most award rates at will.
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 »
