Two years ago the Boston Globe revealed that the TSA was following ordinary Americans and taking notes on their habits and behaviors for a file, even though they hadn’t been flagged as threats, for a program called “Quiet Skies.” The TSA denied they were doing this. Then they promised to stop.
The program continued anyway, and the DHS Inspector General found that it’s very, very broken.
At the end of the current Japan Airlines schedule first class awards are wide open for two passengers on the New York JFK – Tokyo Haneda route.
Here’s availability for not just two award seats – far more widespread – but for four passengers at 34,000 miles each way per person and without big fuel surcharges.
It’s nice to see how much award space is open on Singapore Airlines non-stops from the U.S. While two business class seats are common throughout 2021, in August and September there’s a wide variety of days on the Los Angeles – Singapore route where four business class saver award seats are available.
Thai Airways has opened a refurbished Royal Orchid business class lounge in Bangkok. It’s an international departures lounge on level 3 of the Suvarnabhumi airport E concourse. It’s a strange time to be making capital investments and opening a lounge when the airline is not generally selling international flights leaving the country.
While Qantas CEO Alan Joyce was the first to voice a plan to permit only passengers who have been vaccinated to fly internationally, U.S. airlines are considering a vaccination requirement as well.
They want to figure out whether this will give customers confidence to travel, and whether requirements can be made uniform across airlines so they don’t have to compete for customers with vaccine policies. A vaccine requirement though will be unnecessary by the time the vaccine is available enough for this to become possible.
The new American Airlines safety video was supposed to debut back in April. It was delayed due to the pandemic. They queued it for December rollout, but decided it wasn’t a good time and tried to pull it back.
Many of the employees featured in the safety video are… no longer employees. They’ve been furloughed since the video was shot.
Yesterday I wrote about American’s holiday gift promotion and new targeted promotions for flying. Offers are now live in member accounts. What gift did you receive, and what offer was targeted to encourage you to fly?
Here’s what I got – I’m left shaking my head.
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.
Outside of Chase transfers to Hyatt, conversions of transferrable points into hotel points is simply a bad deal and a 30% transfer bonus doesn’t reverse that calculus. American Express points are just too valuable to transfer to Marriott given the weak transfer ratio.
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 »
