Search Results for "ASIA".
Saudi Arabia is starting a new, second national airline with plans to compete – and beat – Emirates. They are going to invest $30 billion in the effort.
It’s likely to be called RIA and will be based out of Riyadh. And their goal is… transit passengers.
American Express is offering 12 simultaneous bonuses for transfers from Membership Rewards to airlines and hotels. They’ve only ever done this once before. It’s a cacophony of opportunity for those who have their transferable points. The offers run through September 30, except for Marriott and Hilton which runs through October 31.
Russia’s Rostec – 92% owned by the government there – owns Irkut and the Yakovlev Design Bureau and they have a new single aisle aircraft that they say American Airlines may be flying in the next 5 to 10 years. They’ve mocked up the aircraft in American Airlines livery to show what it would look like.
The MC-21 (called the MS-21 in Russia) represents the “Main Aircraft Of The 21st Century” and was earlier known as the Yak-242.
I’m shocked to see that Alaska Airlines appears to have wide open award availability for Singapore Airlines business class awards between the U.S. and Asia. In fact it seems they have at least as good availability as is offered to Singapore’s own members.
Some passengers simply will not change seats when asked, and that is ok. One woman absolutely won’t change seats, unless it is a celebrity doing the asking. She insists on seat 8A on Virgin Atlantic, and will take a different flight if she cannot have it. And she absolutely won’t fly in a backwards-facing business class seat.
The woman reports that a father was furious when she wouldn’t switch seats so that family could sit together – wishing her “ill for the future” and “storm[ing] off.”
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.
Bilt Rewards is adding 3 new airline transfer partners, which will give them 12 airline partners and 14 transfer partners overall. In addition to being able to transfer Bilt points to American, united, Air Canada, Turkish, Hyatt and more you can now transfer points to British Airways – and coming next month will be able to also transfer to Iberia and Aer Lingus.
Richard Kerr, formerly of The Points Guy and the Award Travel 101 Facebook group who is now with Bilt Rewards, offered a couple of provocative questions in his Instagram feed.
He asks why some people value clearly less valuable currencies more than a Bilt point. He may be asking about individual program members, but I’m going to ask it of those people who are supposed to know – travel bloggers who publish valuations of different mileage currencies. Much of the work those bloggers are doing fails to hold together.
I don’t love Chicago O’Hare, but when I book an O’Hare connection I usually think, “at least I can get Tortas Frontera.” And I’ll pick up a sandwich (choriqueso is my go-to, followed by the pepito) even though there’s free lounge food available. I’ll gladly pay for something good enough that I would eat it even if it wasn’t inside of an airport.
There need to be some licensed TGI Fridays and plenty of quick serve places in an airport, to put out a lot of food to travelers with varying palates. But not every place needs to do that.
You can earn 20,000 Etihad Guest miles per 3+ day Avis rental. This is in addition to the usual base miles earned renting cars. I’m not sure I’ve seen a richer rental car offer since 2008.
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 »
