United Airlines Senior Vice President of Financial Planning John Gebo told the carrier’s employees that the carrier is open to mergers and acquisitions. My bet is this doesn’t happen, but there’s a way that it could.
As part of their soon-to-launch relationship with JetBlue, American will begin New York JFK – Tel Aviv, the most crowded Israel market but also the biggest.
Now they’ve announced the route that seemed to make sense six years ago when it looked like they’d go it alone to Israel: Miami – Tel Aviv. They’ve also announced six other new international routes, and two domestic Saturday-only regional jet routes. To several Latin cities they’ll be bigger this summer than they were in 2019.
Christopher Elliott has naughty and nice list for travel companies during the pandemic. He sees some behaving as though “they think COVID-19 is a hoax.” That seems like an odd position to take considering their billions of dollars of losses. But what he’s saying is that airlines and hotel companies are making travel more comfortable or fun, that encourages travel, and that’s bad. And the self-styled consumer advocate glosses over a company that tried to steal customers’ money because they promise to make employees take vaccines.
The Sheraton Atlanta Airport was liquidated, with all its furnishings sold off. Now the Sheraton Atlanta Downtown has been ransacked as well by a man driving through the hotel’s lobby. He parked in front of the elevators.
The CEO of Qantas said Australia would re-open to visitors in July. The government said not so fast, without actually denying the claim. Now we know a little more about Australia’s re-opening plan.
According to an internal memo Cathay Pacific now exempts business and first class passengers from wearing masks while in their seats in lie-flat mode.
According to the airline, “seats in first and business class are more spacious with partitions, and passengers are exempted when lying flat for sleep.”
I am making fully refundable bookings using points. However I’ve been avoiding transferring American Express and Chase points when I do not have to, because while awards can be redeposited into an airline frequent flyer account the points cannot usually be moved back from the airline account to Amex or Chase. When you transfer flexible bank points there is a cost in lost flexibility.
Domestic travel should be mostly doable this summer, especially for the vaccinated. We’ll likely be able to travel to hard-hit destinations with vaccination and a negative test, though countries that have quashed the virus will probably stay closed longer.
Alaska Airlines is running a ‘Buy One Get One’ sale which amounts to 50% off when two people are traveling using promo code LETSGO when booked by Monday, February 8, 2021.
It’s the Safety Dance BOGO since Alaska is using its ‘Men Without Hats’ parody on Covid safety as a Superbowl ad in select West Coast markets.
The U.S. now requires a negative Covid-19 test in order to enter the country by air – even if you’re a citizen returning home. We’re hardly alone, many countries require a Covid-19 test to enter. Since testing can be an expensive hassle even people without the virus are faking negative tests. On one flight 95% of passengers presented fake negative results. But it’s not just negative Covid-19 test results that are being faked.
Hertz is in bankruptcy yet last year their stock was a favorite of Redditors on the Robinhood app. They’ve been sending customers to jail when they fail to mark rental agreements as extended, or fail to mark a car back into inventory and rent it again.
Now they’ve sent out a message seemingly at least as customer-friendly as everyone else: that they were pausing points expiration through December 31, 2021. But their fingers were crossed.
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 »
