Act Fast: Award Nights Wide Open At Waldorf Astoria Maldives

by Gary Leff

May 18 2021

At the beginning of the month I reported that Hilton had raised the top price of an award night to 150,000 points and that this applies only to the Waldorf Astoria in the Maldives. Some redemption nights there are 120,000 points, however.

When this was discovered there were no redemption nights available at all. Even with the higher pricing it wasn’t possible to spend Hilton points for a standard room, and could only use ‘points as money’ to book rooms based on the prevailing room rate (which can cost over a million points per night). All of a sudden that’s changed so act fast.

Continue Reading »

British Airways Rolling Out Sleep Pods In Lounges

by Gary Leff

May 18 2021

British Airways has a new nap lounge called Forty Winks” which opened on Monday in the First Class lounge at London Heathrow airport, which is currently open to business class passengers as well, and will also be a feature in London’s Concorde Room and at New York JFK.

Their sleep pod with Restworks (so there’s a revenue stream) feature “the world’s first chair designed exclusively for power napping.”

Continue Reading »

American Won’t Add Flights To Europe This Summer, Because Too Many People Want To Fly To Cancun

by Gary Leff

american airlines planes
May 17 2021

One of the most common questions I’ve gotten over the past couple of months is whether airlines will add more flights to Europe this summer, with countries opening up and vaccination rates rising.

American Airlines Vice President of Network and Schedule Planning Brian Znotis addressed this head-on with employees last week, explaining that American won’t add more Europe this summer because they can make more money flying to Cancun than Athens and they no longer have spare aircraft to add flights – so each potential long haul flight trades off with flying they’re already doing.

Continue Reading »