Last year Virgin Atlantic made Flying Club award redemptions for its flight count towards elite status. Now they’ve made several additional changes that most members are going to like.
After America West management took over US Airways they stopped operating the Shuttle as an airline-within-an-airline. They stopped operating an all-coach subfleet of aircraft with its own livery. And when US Airways management took over American, the shuttle became an American Airlines product.
American is replacing the ‘Shuttle’ product in a couple of ways. They’ll no longer fly New York LaGuardia – Boston, and they’re introducing a new fare that’s meant to be ‘Shuttle-like.’
Ultimately the passenger’s only defense to the airline’s banning decision was his recording – a recording which would have violated the airline’s rules, taking place in terminal areas that they control. Maybe he sassed a flight attendant, or maybe he even had a mask beneath his nose, but being followed through the terminal by a pilot is… bizarre.
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.
United Airlines is running a deep discount business class sale out of several Delta hub cities. You can fly United from the U.S. to Rio or São Paulo from $1102 roundtrip for business class. This fare certainly will not last.
The Marriott Bonvoy program is, on paper at least, head and shoulders above the Hilton Honors and IHG Rewards offerings. Those other two don’t even guarantee late check-out, let alone promise that suite upgrades will be provided when a standard suite is available.
In practice, though, Bonvoy doesn’t live up to its promises.
A passenger hanging their hair over their seat back, in front of the passenger behind them, frequently creates a social media stir. And it immediately prompts fiendish dreams of cutting off the passenger’s hair with a pair of scissors. Fortunately the person trying to work on their laptop on a Southwest Airlines flight on Tuesday had no such impulse – or scissors.
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.
The value of frequent flyer miles is something I’ve been calculating for years. I think what makes my approach different is I lay out the theory behind my valuations, I explain a lot of the moving pieces, and I present a comparison between my valuations and the valuations others are giving. I first laid this out the value of frequent flyer miles in 2014 and then updated values in 2016, 2017 and 2019. I skipped 2020 due to the pandemic but a tremendous amount has changed. Air Canada launched a new program with the same name (raising redemption prices but eliminating fuel surcharges), Delta and United devalued partner awards more than once, Capital One launched transferrable points mostly at 1:1, and new program Bilt entered the transferable points space – to name just a few…
Marriott has their own homesharing platform to compete directly with Airbnb, but Marriott hotels list at Airbnb and not Marriott Homes & Villas, and in some cases pull their room inventory from Marriott entirely to sell suites through Airbnb.
What I find perhaps most striking is nobody at Marriott corporate thought to Google “airbnb+[Marriott brand]” to suss this stuff out?
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 »
