Marriott is eliminating award charts, but they won’t tell us exactly when. So it’s a secret devaluation.
They say it’s coming sometime in March. That’s consistent with the original announcement that award charts would cease in March 2022. Some people have assumed this would mean March 1, 2022. And that’s possible, however a Marriott spokesperson tells me “we haven’t announced the date yet.”
Could this be the end of first class on international routes and premium cross country flights on American Airlines? Or the introduction of a really stepped up business class, or both?
Wednesday evening American was marketing cross country flights on its premium Airbus A321T aircraft as offering “Flagship Business” and “Flagship Business Plus,” the latter instead of first class,. Indeed, the column heading where ‘First’ used to be was replaced with ‘Premier’ at aa.com. And now the change has been rolled back.
American Airlines has been clamping down on websites that work with AAdvantage member data for their customers. They made Award Wallet stop tracking member accounts and they sent a cease and desist letter to Red Ventures, which owns The Points Guy, over its TPG app which – among other things – lets customers track their frequent flyer program balances.
American sought to stop the practice, and so Red Ventures first sued American Airlines seeking declaratory relief. And now American Airlines and its loyalty subsidiary have countersued in the Northern District of Texas.
Now this just seems like next-level trolling by the Biden Administration Department of Homeland Security. The Transportation Security Administration says that undocumented immigrants “who are unable to obtain proper identification” can “pass through security using an arrest warrant to prove their identity.”
They want single tray service in international business (and first) class and reduced beverage service in coach on all flights. And they say this is to keep flight attendants safe.
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to award incentives to employees for getting exemption from vaccination requirements.
There have been several stories reporting one piece of change that’s happening at IHG Rewards – the introduction of a new mid-tier level, a change in the name of their top tier, and new qualification requirements for status.
I spoke with Heather Balsley this morning. She’s Senior Vice President of Global Loyalty and Partnerships at IHG Hotels & Resorts. And she shared some other pieces of what’s changing now, and what’s coming in the next few months where the focus will be on elite benefits, the area where she seemed to agree IHG has historically had the biggest opportunities for improvement.
It’s all either a trumped up non-issue, or an aviation apocalypse, depending on whom you ask. The worry is that C-band 5G at the power and frequency that will be used in the U.S. could send confusing signals to radio altimeters in aircraft, leading to confusion over the altitude at which the plane is flying, and problems for other systems in some aircraft like Boeing 777s as well. What’s going on here?
In explaining the no-notice elimination of air and hotel travel packages they say they cannot support category-based stay certificates once they eliminate award categories in March – so these packages go away, and any unused certificates can only be cancelled and converted back to points.
Last week Marriott dropped into their terms and conditions that they were eliminating travel packages effective January 19, 2022. This was apparently published in the terms and conditions too early, and Marriott removed this from their published terms telling me they “published prematurely..[w]e will have additional details for members in the coming days.”
However Marriott never told members in advance about this change.
The view now is that we just need to get through Omicron. Indeed the industry is gearing up for a return to normal after the Omicron wave. There’s hope that more borders will re-open, more employees will return to office, and there’ll be a return to normal travel and then some given intertemporal substitution – that people refrained from travel for a long time, and will make up for it quickly.
Underlying this belief are several assumptions, which are very much the ‘base case’ but are far from assured.
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 »
