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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 has introduced Bilt Dining where you’ll automatically earn 5 points per dollar spent at participating restaurants when you pay using any credit card that you’ve added to your Bilt Wallet in the Bilt Rewards mobile app.
You may be familiar with the dining programs of airlines and hotel programs, run through third party Rewards Network. This is a different program, being built from the ground up with restaurants that in many cases are quite good – that you’ll actually want to eat at – rather than just being financially-strapped restaurants that need Rewards Network funding.
A frequent flyer on Reddit asks whether they’re a jerk for reclining their seat. As background, they’re 6’3″ and in first class, and they try to be polite – making sure the person in the seat behind them “doesn’t have a laptop out… then slowly recline[s their] seat back.” And they still wound up in a hostile encounter with a passenger when they did it. They gave in the first time, and kept their seat straight, until after the meal when a flight attendant gave them ‘permission’ to try again.
British Airways is launching ‘Avios Only’ flights – flights they aren’t selling for cash, just making available for redemption.
More airlines should offer more availability once they properly understand the value in delivering to members over the long-term. Programs should be willing to spend more with their airline on seats, to avoid killing their golden goose – in the U.S. the biggest airline loyalty programs are worth 11 figures, and generate $5 billion-plus annually in revenue. Frustrated members reduce that long-term value proposition
While right now the cheapest business class roundtrip fares are over $4000 between San Francisco and Tokyo, ZIPAIR is selling business class for just $1668. And there are great deals from Los Angeles as well.
Sri Lanka is one of the three largest recipients of lending from China. Their basic problem is spending more money than they have, and then limiting further what they have through regulation. The government there decided farms needed to switch to organic practices, banning chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which led to lower yields without being offset by higher prices. Food shortages followed.
The government needs to curtail its spending and devalue its currency. Part of that means reducing subsidies of inefficient businesses, that have been kept as corrupt enterprises to benefit powerful elites.
American Airlines has eliminated its ‘saver’ and ‘anytime’ awards. Now when you’re using American’s miles to fly American Airlines, the only option is web special awards, which have been renamed Flight Awards. Nothing else changes at this time, though a number of things flow from this decision.
Most awards were already web specials. There’s a new award chart, but it doesn’t provide very much information. Overall I consider the change negative, but mostly just recognizing past devaluations rather than representing a new devaluation.
American Airlines has eliminated Saver and Anytime awards, and replaced those award charts with a new ‘starting from’ pricing chart for American Airlines flights. There are no changes to partner awards or upgrade awards. And since most American awards were already dynamically-priced web specials, in practice little changes at all.
Here are the full details.
With their high costs, they need to earn a revenue premium in order to generate a profit, but they’ve been reluctant to make investments that would help to deliver the premium product.
As a frequent customer, with Executive Platinum status for over a decade and even briefly a ConciergeKey member, I’ve observed many of the pain points at the airline – many of which could be improved at low cost, or are bare minimum investments they need to make to remain competitive and continue generating revenue. So in the interests of helping American to deliver both a better and more profitable product, I share 12 realistic ways they can improve the customer experience.
American sees itself as having “the best hubs in the business for domestic and international short haul network” in Charlotte, DFW, and Phoenix. They’re working to build New York JFK working with Alaska to build Seattle on the West Coast, according to executives in a recording of comments to employees last week that’s been shared with View From The Wing. However their approach to long haul is different.
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 »
