The people who run Priority Pass and The Club lounges also now provide Covid-19 testing at Dallas Fort-Worth airport. Collinson offers rapid tests and PCR tests, and for a premium will even turn around PCR tests same day (though it takes longer than just a layover). They tell me they have “applied to be a Trusted Partner with Hawaii and anticipates approval in June.”
At the Wolfe Research conference yesterday Glen Hauenstein remarked that Delta had 53 Sky Clubs open pre-pandemic and will have 53 open in June. There’s an emphasis on premium product coming out of the recent challenging period. Delta believes that by offering customers more they can get customers to spend more on premium products which are “higher margin.”
But what if they’re achieving that margin by claiming to offer a premium product, but they’re really offering something you can buy at 7-11?
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.
Countries that have been opening to vaccinated Americans are accepting CDC vaccine cards as ‘proof’ of vaccination. These are pieces of cardstock you can print off the internet, and real ones are often filled out by hand. There is no central federal database of who has had a vaccine, those specifics are generally held at the state level – and the quality of recordkeeping varies dramatically.
The Secretary of Homeland Security says vaccine passports are under serious consideration as a way of helping Americans meet the requirements of entry for foreign countries.
American Airlines has decided to put off its return to offering alcohol in economy on domestic flights until at least September 13th, which is when the federal mask mandate currently runs through.
For six years I’ve written about the frustration where American Airlines would begin boarding planes prior to scheduled boarding time. That often meant showing up at the gate correctly, finding the aircraft mostly boarded, and not having any overhead bin space left.
Customers don’t like it, flight attendants don’t like it, but a union is telling members that the airline believes they can keep on doing it.
Unfortunately a policy change that accompanies the American Airlines move to single agent boarding for flights that are less than 80% full will make it tougher to get onto an earlier flight or to have options during irregular operations, too.
Agent Assist (automated system) will “auto clear revenue and non-revenue customers on certain domestic mainline flights with load factors below 80% …at D-60.”
To fly from the U.K. to Ireland you need a negative PCR Covid-19 test. One woman, a U.K. health care worker, was denied boarding for her flight from Birmingham to Dublin despite having a negative PCR test.
The government doesn’t accept her test, because it was provided by the government – even though it isn’t one of the tests listed as unacceptable. Fortunately there was a workaround to add an enroute stop and avoid the non-sensical requirement.
The Last Hotel in St Louis abruptly left Hyatt on Monday. Customers with reservations were notified that future award reservations would not be honored. This is not unusual.
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 »
