I receive compensation for content and many links on this blog. Be aware that websites may earn compensation when a customer clicks on a link, when an application is approved, or when an account is opened. Citibank is an advertising partner of this site, as is American Express, Chase, Capital One, and others. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners. I do not write about all offers that are available -- instead focusing on miles, points, and cash back (and currencies that can be converted into the same). Terms apply to the offers and benefits listed on this page.
News and notes from around the interweb:
- United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby says only two premium airlines can exist, but maybe one of them isn’t actually United?
I hate airline tweets BUT this is an actual sofa in @united club in Newark. And I paid for my kids to sit on it. I know first world problems.. pic.twitter.com/pShPRzqv7Z
— Benjamin J. Davies MD, MBA (@daviesbj) August 1, 2026
@united seriously dudes, I’m a premier member second time in a month I have gotten in a first class set with a broken table. Last flight was from EWR to LIS now FLL to EWR. No problem charging thousands of dollars to the consumer huge problem with this broken down equipment. pic.twitter.com/odATdHVHb7
— Susan Palenik (@susanpal0715) August 1, 2026
Hey @united I just got on the UA2799 from Ind to SF and not only was it delayed the seat is super dirty as well. pic.twitter.com/jCpfcOIGhL
— Aishwarya Ramasethu (@Aishwarya1955) August 1, 2026
- Is Avios devaluation inevitable? From the first half results report from British Airways parent IAG, the loyalty arm’s profit rose 25% to $321.7 million, and reported a 19% margin. Avios issuance rose 15%, mostly due to banks. Redemptions though increased just 6%, and they blamed Mideast suspensions and fewer people flying Qatar Airways due to the unpleasantness in the region.
They’re printing points, premium opportunities to use them are constrained, they’re making more money but increasing future liabilties. That to me suggests – if trend continues – future devaluation.
- The Citi Strata EliteSM Card (See rates and fees.) includes a Blacklane credit. Bilt Rewards should be introducing one. GHA Discovery has a new status-earning and discounts tie-in with Blacklane.
So it may be useful to sign up for a (free) account. I have 3 referrals to offer with code Fr5JT for $40 off first ride. Since the Citi Strata Elite benefit is a statement credit, it stacks with this. (Note I’d also get $40 off my next booking as well.) Not sure how long all these credits are going to last through Blacklane’s acquisition by Uber, for what it’s worth. Not that they won’t! Just an interesting wrinkle.
- Singapore Airlines is trialing a personal concierge for Suites and first class passengers departing Changi Terminal 3. Assigned in The Private Room, the concierge monitors flights, handles disruptions and shopping requests, then provides buggy transport to the gate and front-of-line security access.
- Capital One 15% transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles through August 31, 2026.
- DFW airport wants to buy the Hyatt Regency there for $193.65 million they already own the Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Place and the under-construction Hyatt House.
It seems to me this airport should never again receive federal subsidies. (Many such cases.)
- Amtrak unveils restructuring plan
- Loyalty program redesign shows what consulting work will survive AI consultants aren’t being paid primarily to give you the answer, but to give the buyer the answer the want to get internal buy-in within the organization, and as long as people are involved in work we have organizations and they’re political valuing different things.
So consultants are a tool for moving forward with the solution you already need. AI can’t do the organization work itself because the relevant knowledge is tacit and private. AI (so far) gives you the solution, not the performative element. Of course “the AI says that” is itself a political tool.
A consultant I had lunch with recently is redesigning the loyalty program of a large airline. His team finished the analysis in two weeks. Months later the program still does not exist. This is because the purpose of the assignment is not to solve an analytical case study, but to figure out which redesign the parties will accept, and to get the people with authority to commit to implementing it.
…So the consultants spend weeks doing an enormous amount of work that looks peripheral to the problem. They repeatedly meet the head of the loyalty program, then the CFO, then the CEO. They also meet the commercial partners, and that means meeting the head of loyalty, then the finance team, then the chief executive. They revise the proposal. They redo the presentation.
And all of these people speak different languages. Organizations have different internal codes because they care about different things and deal with different problems. What the consultants are doing is a mix of analysis, translation and intermediation. The assignment of the consultants is to design a program that is an agreement that the relevant parties will authorize and implement.
Once the analysis is cheap, what remains is to learn what each party will actually accept, and to obtain commitments from those who are authorized to make them.
Scott ‘Highlander’ Kirby was supposed to say, ‘there can only be ONE!’
The EWR couch is locally-inspired (like the food, so United says)
There are zero premium airlines based in the U.S.
@ Orson — THIS!
Never Forget ……….. United Breaks Guitars………..
The difference between American and United is that United has a blowhard CEO who doesn’t shut his mouth. I continue to believe that if you strip out all of the bluster, AA and UA are on par with each other, and will always be.
@orson: jsx
re: AI (so far) gives you the solution, not the performative element
Ai absolutely can ‘do’ the ‘performative element’ if 1) you tell it what to do and 2) if it’s doable within the framework of information technology.
The latter is an extremely broad statement, but there is a difference between ‘solutioning’ and ‘performing’, and Ai is actually less effective at the former.
As stated, Ai can’t meet with 20 different stakeholder cohorts, nor can it do complex if/then/else operations unless the entire decision tree is fed to the model, and 99.999999% of companies never completely document their processes and business rules; they believe policy = documentation; and the only documentation of that policy is in code or employee manuals, and not documented in the business flows or in a process dictionary – both of the latter being necessary to ‘feed’ Ai for automation of operations.
Gary, would you please re-write this sentence in a manner that makes it comprehensible? “Consultants aren’t being paid primarily to give you the answer, but to give the buyer the answer the want to get internal buy-in within the organization, and as long as people are involved in work we have organizations and they’re political valuing different things.”
This site is very helpful. It reinforces our decision to no longer book U.S. based airlines. In our opinion, American is the worst, followed by United. Thank you.
@Gary – would love to get your take on the Amtrak proposal to break it up into 3 companies with Amtrak as a holding company – feels like it could operationally be a positive although obviously opens the door to more neatly privatize part of it down the road.
@DL – I think that’s roughly right from the passenger experience side of things (and it’s not like Delta is that much better on board either). But the financial results speak for themselves.
@Peter – i haven’t thought deeply enough about the particulars, though i begin skeptical that this will address amtrak’s fundamental problems [the market for rail, that they are incentivized to chase subsidies rather than provide services passengers want, little ability to fix their cost structure, etc]
I don’t expect Amtrak to be privatized unless it were just assets, without debts or employee costs. And I suspect there’s enough support in Congress to keep them afloat, which also means not much changes or improves.
@Peter — Thank you for bringing this up! When I saw the Amtrak Board announcement, my first thought was: Oh, so they’re just now starting to implement that section of Project 2025. (See Chapter 19). Unbundling is step one of the classic “privatize the profits, socialize the losses” playbook. We should know better. The UK’s rail restructuring in the 1990s didn’t improve service; it just created administrative bloat, squeezed labor agreements, and inflated fares for riders.
@Gary Leff — I imagine you’re not using Amtrak much in Austin, but it’s a big deal in the NE corridor (and PNW). You already know that nearly every transportation mode in this country is heavily subsidized. Federal highway grants pay for asphalt, municipal bonds fund airports, and federal taxes fund the FAA and TSA (I recall you may want to do away with some of that, namely ATC, so…time to re-post that article, I guess). Yet, nobody expects interstate highways to yield a direct dividend to the Treasury because we recognize them as essential public infrastructure. Thankfully, full privatization is unlikely because Congress would have to act (and it won’t). The real story, for now, is that Amtrak’s management just wants to better hide performance failures and protect their compensation. Meanwhile, real reforms would mean giving Amtrak statutory teeth against freight host interference and securing dedicated funding (personally, I’d like to see that!)
When the EWR Polaris lounge opened they kept the old UC furniture! I took the same pictures of the cracked leather(?) chairs. They thought putting them in the corner would hide them – it did not.
On top of that – the buffet there is a germaphobe worst nightmare – I brought it up to the food manager and nothing was done.
Yes, I agree – even though UA is my airline of choice, they have a long way to go for just the basics! You can get great customer service but if the seat is dirty – no amount of I’m sorry-ing fixes that. UA planes and club are dirty – but so are 90% of the other air carriers. I was in the LH lounge last year – they need to clean it too.
Judging an airline based on the same criteria is difficult – you can’t compare an Emirates flight with a LAXJFK and you reviewers need to stop doing this!
Never Forget ……….. United Breaks Guitars………..
ZZZZZZZ…..most of us have. That was what, 2008? 2026 now.
Well in fairness to UA about the aircraft, most of the Delta flights I’ve been on the bathrooms looked much worse. I don’t mean cleanliness (that’s every airline), I mean the bathrooms falling apart. Looked like when delta refurbished the interiors they forgot to do the bathrooms.