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Starwood and Delta launched a major partnership four years ago. Crossover Rewards offered reciprocal points-earning and a modest degree of status recognition.
Delta had been talking with Marriott about a deal, but my recollection from the time is that Marriott balked over price. Delta simply wanted too much to do the deal. However Marriott launched a partnership with United months after Delta and Starwood went public.
I was talking with Yana about Virgin Atlantic’s amazing ANA awards — seriously, roundtrip in one of the world’s better first class products for 110,000 miles between the US and Tokyo — and I was outlining all of the hoops you have to jump through.
Yana’s response to that whole discussion was perfect and just 5 words: the Law of One Price.
In 2013 Delta eliminated SkyMiles elite qualifying miles earning when traveling on their SkyTeam partner Korean Air.
Scuttlebutt at the time was that this was Delta playing hardball with Korean — the Seoul-based carrier wouldn’t do a joint venture with Delta, at least on Delta’s terms, so they weren’t going to incentivize their customers to fly Korean Air.
I’ve always found US government travel warnings to be overly cautious. I have no problem transiting the Istanbul airport, booking an award on Turkish Airlines (just hope your seat opponent doesn’t whisper to a flight attendant that you’re a Gulenist).
Since I’m willing to go places like this, it seems worth highlighting a counterpoint. The government doesn’t say ‘don’t go to Mexico’ just that there are some Bad Hombres™ there.
Singapore Airlines Krisflyer is eliminating fuel surcharges on Singapore Airlines award redemptions effective March 23, along with increasing the price of some awards and ending the 15% online booking discount.
They’re doing this, it turns out, ahead of eliminating fuel surcharges as an airline.
Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer is one of the most valuable frequent flyer programs in the world.
They’re making 3 major changes; eliminating fuel surcharges on Singapore Airlines redemptions, eliminating the 15% online booking discount, and raising some redemption prices.
These aren’t many hotels that are changing category, but Club Carlson’s category changes were posted online (and they go into effect tomorrow, March 1.
Hotels in the US and Asia are going up. Hotels in Europe, Mideast and Africa are mostly going down. In all 13 hotels are going up in category, 7 are going down, for 20 total changes.
British Airways OpenSkies has a sale fare that lets you stack two discounts and get the price between New York (Newark and JFK) and Paris-Orly under $300 roundtrip.
There’s also a broader sale between several US cities and several cities in Europe for about $400 roundtrip on American and Delta for outbound travel in early May or for mid August through December.
Back in 2012 Ryanair floated the idea of ‘standing seats’ to pack more passengers in and lower costs.
And Airbus has a patent for ‘double decker’ seating. But neither idea is supposed to be real or is approved for flying — anywhere.
Food tastes different on a plane than it does on the ground. Your taste buds are dulled at altitude. Most planes are pressurized to 8000 feet, while newer generation aircraft like the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 are pressurized to 6000 feet.
That’s why tomato juice is a surprisingly popular drink on planes (and here I thought it was because tomato juice is an excellent source of vitamin c and vodka).
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 »
