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.
Right now, because of how three of their Hilton’s policies work together, 15 hotel nights are enough to earn Diamond status through March 2023
Airline lavatories are usually pretty simple. To be sure some passengers fail to use them, sometimes they’re inoperative and sometimes other passengers stink them up, but for the most part they work the same way. The only thing that confuses passengers is which one are they allowed to use?
This long-controversial question has been settled on United Airlines: to reduce bunching of passengers waiting in line for the loo, they may now use any lavatory on the plane. This is a coronavirus distancing measure.
United has a way for everyone to have confidence that travel is safe from the virus – test everyone on the plane before departure – and believes this can open up travel as well as bring back passengers. So they’re offering it free as a trial on several Newark – London flights that customers can choose to book. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Listening to the flight attendants melt down over this, or celebrate in pure joy, is an act of unrivaled schadenfreude. On your next American Airlines flight it may be the cabin crew brawling, rather than passengers in a mask dispute
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.
I hope the anonymous airline captain who authored the latest post at Live and Let’s Fly demanding more respect never happens to be flying an aircraft I’m ticketed on because he’s threatening to make things worse for passengers if pilots are criticized, even when the criticism is justified – as the anonymous captain admits that it is.
He takes issue with my post about the Delta captain who kicked a woman off a flight over her F-12 hat, which she took off as he instructed.
The federal government is looking to require foreign visitors and prospective immigrants to submit “fingerprints and possibly other biometric information..into a new database” prior to being permitted to submit online visa applications and even ESTA requests.
Jamie Baker, in a research note for J.P. Morgan Chase, points out that if airlines get another ‘payroll support’ bailout they’d have to spend some of that money on extra payroll. In other words it isn’t all money straight into the kitty.
But will it happen? Baker says a new round of subsidies will happen (“We believe PSP 2.0 is a question of when, not if”). And then expect airlines to come back again for a third round.
Barclays is offering 100,000 points as an initial bonus for the $99 annual fee JetBlue Plus Card. The offer is also available for the $99 annual fee JetBlue Business Card.
You’ll generally get 1 to 1.6 cents per point in value redeeming for JetBlue flights. Mint (business class) flights will skew towards the lower end. I value a JetBlue point at around 1.25 cents apiece, so a 100,000 point offer means $1250 worth of travel, or $1151 net of each card’s annual fee.
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 »
