The complimentary upgrade program has one oddball route exception. All Caribbean flights receive complimentary upgrades except one. It’s a 900 mile flight operated with an American Eagle Embraer E-175 regional jet.
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.
Congress, at the behest of pilots unions and under the guise of safety after the Colgan Air accident, created significant barriers to becoming a pilot that were completely unrelated to the cause of that incident. Congress can fix this if they want air service to the smallest cities, precisely what gets cut as pilots are allocated to the most valuable trips, they should fix this.
The Gaylord Rockies adds a 2.5% “public fee” to guest folios. A ‘public fee’ certainly sounds like a tax. However the City of Aurora, Colordo doesn’t impose such a thing. And other Aurora hotels don’t appear to charge this either.
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.
Last week I flew Austin – Washington Dulles and a flight attendant told me American was planning to start flying Austin – Washington National. She was sure of it! I explained the perimeter rule to her and how American cannot fly Austin – Washington National without the Department of Transportation assigning ‘beyond perimeter’ slots that are created in law. It turns out she’d heard this news from… a passenger.
That said sometimes there are real tidbits of news, or at least interesting opinions. So I thought I’d pass along these ‘pilot tidbits’ shared to twitter by serial airline newsbreaker JonNYC along with context for what they mean.
American Airlines is launching a new long haul Pacific route, Dallas to Auckland, complementing Qantas Dallas – Sydney service. They won’t restart Los Angeles – Auckland, though, and they’re dropping the idea of Dallas – Tel Aviv. The long-expect Seattle – Bangalore flight, which was supposed to be American’s first return to India, won’t happen until (at least) summer 2023 if it comes to fruition.
There are several more route changes as American adjusts its international strategy as well.
One week ago the British government announced sanctions against three Russian airlines: Aeroflot, Ural Airlines and Rossiya Airlines. This kept them from selling or leasing takeoff and landing slots at U.K. airports. Russian airlines already couldn’t enter U.K. airspace.
We now know what this means in practice for their London Heathrow slots: Russian airlines don’t just lose the ability to profit from their slots, they actually lose the slots.
Delta Air Lines used to have a reputation for almost never cancelling a mainline flight. Their unique selling proposition was their reliability. They accomplished this with a fleet of generally older aircraft, and built a maintenance capability so effective that it became a profit center.
Reliability isn’t a new problem for Delta, in fact Delta was first to begin having operational meltdowns in the Covid world. But as the halo wears off the wheels could begin to fall off of the SkyMiles program and have implications far beyond Delta too.
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.
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 »
