Air Canada’s new Aeroplan program eliminated fuel surcharges on award travel and introduced a region and distanced-based award chart.
Two years after the new program’s award pricing was announced they’re making several changes, in general reducing the price of partner short-distance awards between different regions of the world while increasing the price of the longest trips in premium cabins. These go into effect September 1.
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.
Etihad Airways has finally become profitable, disclosing $690 million in adjusted earnings and $296 million in operating profit during the first half of 2022 on operating revenue of $2.29 billion. The state-owned carrier did not disclose net profit.
Despite only limited information, it’s still clearly a huge swing for an airline that lost $2 billion in 2016, and $1.5 billion in 2017 pursuing a strategy of buying stakes in nearly every dumpster fire airline they could get their hands on (but still refusing to take a stake in South African Airways, which even for Etihad at the time was a step too far).
Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) are expected to introduce a bill to limit credit card interchange fees. If enacted it would be a huge win for merchants, who love taking credit cards – since it means higher sales volumes at a lower cost than accepting cash – but would prefer not to pay for the privileges.
This is usually couched, by lobbyists for big retailers, as benefiting consumers. However prices haven’t fallen anywhere that interchange has been limited, such as in Europe and Australia. But it would effectively end credit card rewards as we know it.
In a move that should make it even easier to buy Southwest Airlines tickets they’ve announced that their credits will never expire. All Southwest Airlines flight credits active starting today – however you’ll see a ‘placeholder’ expiration date of December 31, 2040 with tech updates later in the year eliminating the expiration date and process entirely.
Yesterday Spirit Airlines shareholders rejected an agreement to sell to Frontier with JetBlue offering far more money.
Now Spirit’s board has agreed to sell to JetBlue under the same terms as the New York-based carrier’s last offer – a price 40% higher than Frontier was offering at the time it was made a month ago.
JetBlue wants to buy Spirit for parts – gates, slots (though they’d divest many of those), pilots and planes. And they’re willing to pay $400 million for the chance to get the deal to close in the face of government opposition.
Meanwhile the most likely way to get regulatory approval is to trade the American Airlines joint venture, which the federal government is also opposing. If they can make that deal quickly, they can presumably have Spirit.
On Monday July 25 Delta flight 9923 from New York JFK to Accra, Ghana headed out over the Atlantic and then diverted back due to fuel issues. The flight had already been delayed from the day before, reportedly due to a sick pilot, and was operated as a special extra section.
However the second attempt at the flight took a turn for the worse. A couple of hours out over the Atlantic the captain announced that the Boeing 767 had a fuel issue, and that they would have to return to New York. Emergency crews met the plane on arrival.
Out of the top busiest airports in the world last year, eight of the top 10 were in the United States. In fact, 10 of the top 12 were in the U.S. as well.
These top 20 airports handled 19% of world passenger traffic in 2021 (863 million total passengers).
After flying between Dallas – Fort Worth and Detroit, a woman took to twitter to share her experience trying to use the first class lavatory as a passenger sitting at the front of the coach cabin. She’s not a frequent flyer, asked a flight attendant where the restroom was, and she says she was told to use the restroom in front.
However when she got there she felt scolded and was sent back to use the coach lavatory. And while she’s black, she reports that white passengers were allowed to use that lavatory without a scolding.
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 »
