American Airlines has a wide variety of policies for how many checked bags are offered free to customers. They’re simplifying their policies, which in a couple of cases means more free bags but in other cases means fewer.
They’re also adding basic economy fares to transpacific and Israel/India flights, but those fares will include a checked bag. So the major restriction is that these fares will not allow changes.
A former Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-300 is being offered for sale on Facebook.
The plane was delivered to Southwest in October 1995 and named for the airline’s first Vice President of Maintenance Jack Vidal. It was parked in September 2017. It is currently stored in Victorville, California and it can be yours for an asking price of $550,000.
A woman was removed from a Spirit Airlines flight to Florida on Thursday over her refusal to wear a mask. She told cabin crew that they were going to have to forcibly remove her – and that she didn’t have to wear a mask because she was eating. Back in September a man used a can of Pringles to avoid wearing a mask on an entire four hour flight.
The Hyatt Regency Sonoma Wine Country has been playing games with free room night award availability. Most of the time you’ve been able to use Hyatt points for free nights there. However there’s a trick they’ve been using at peak times, like Memorial Day Weekend, to stop people from redeeming. They’ve been pulling a fast one on program members – and Hyatt. Fortunately after I pinged someone at Hyatt, they cracked down in less than 24 hours.
American and JetBlue announced several new routes and codesharing to move forward with their ‘Northeastern alliance’ covering New York and Boston.
One of the routes, though, is curious because of a legal quirk. By law they’ll only be permitted to operate this flight on Saturdays.
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.
Anyone claiming a mask exception on American now also gets the seat next to them empty and priority boarding, too. But they have to sit in the last row of their cabin, whether coach or business/first class. Here’s how the process works.
A customer paid for ‘Early Bird Check-in’ in order to board earlier – their flight was cancelled and they were rebooked on another flight, they didn’t receive the earlier boarding they paid for (they had to buy it again!) or a refund of their early check-in fee.
Naturally Southwest Airlines argues the case can’t be pursued because it’s pre-empted by the Airline Deregulation Act. They lost.
Is it wrong to hope that the airline’s rehabilitation plan includes retrofitting existing long haul aircraft with a first class cabin? That’s probably more of a political move (to appease minor royal relatives and generals) than a business one, but I’ve genuinely valued access to their excess inventory through miles and points over the last two decades.
Thanks to a year-old partnership, if you want to buy a ticket from American Airlines to go beyond their destinations in Brazil you’ll generally fly to South America on American and connect to your final destination on Gol. One passenger tried to fly Gol to
São Paulo, connecting to American Airlines on an American Airlines ticket, and wound up in a confrontation with police in the middle of Gol’s ticketing office in São Luís.
Gol first insisted the U.S. citizen required a Green Card to travel to the United States, and then that American Airlines had Covid-19 test requirements that differed from the CDC’s. In the end though it was flying on an American Airlines codeshare that really fouled things up.
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 »
