Tag Archives for iberia.
British Airways parent IAG held their version of Investor Day on Friday. The presentation (.pdf) clearly wasn’t geared towards customers, focused as it was on cost-cutting and promising not to grow their flights. They’ve always been probably too candid, even, at these events in describing how they plan to separate customers from their money.
Avios is a driver of profit, strong relative to size and regulation, but does less of a good job driving airline revenue that one would expect. Most program members are inactive, which isn’t surprising, and members prefer inflated award costs of cash co-pays (fuel surcharges).
LATAM’s Chairman gave an interview in Spanish where he dished on when LATAM started talking to Delta, the timeline for shifting their partnerships, and which one’s they’re going to retain — as well as when they broke up with American Airlines.
American Express is offering a 40% bonus on transfers from Membership Rewards to British Airways through October 1. They’re also offering the same 40% bonus on transfers to Iberia and to Aer Lingus, all of which are owned by the same company. I find that you need to log in to your Membership Rewards account to see the transfer bonuses.
American Airlines is running all of its Europe and deep South America flights from New York JFK with Boeing 777s. That’s too much capacity even for a joint venture partner’s hub like Madrid (Iberia). They really ought to be basing some smaller aircraft, like Boeing 787s, out of New York and serving more destinations profitably.
During peak summer months and during fall and winter holidays there’s often fare compression, business class tickets go down in price (especially for restricted fares that leisure flyers can buy) while coach gets more expensive. We’re certainly seeing that on American’s New York JFK – Madrid route, where they’re discounting business class. For about the same money you can also fly their partner Iberia’s business class non-stop as well.
Due to mechanical problems with her plane, German Chancellor Angela Merkel flew Iberia business class to the G20 Summit in Argentina in December.
It seems, though, that this wasn’t a one-off and the German government is unable to keep their fleet of military executive planes in the air.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel faced mechanical problems while headed to the G20 summit in Argentina. So she wound up having to fly commercial (and not even on Lufthansa).
Chase shared with me that Ultimate Rewards would no longer partner with Korean Air SkyPass after August 24. You have through August 24 to make these transfers.
American Express tells me that their Membership Rewards program will be adding Aer Lingus as a 1:1 points transfer “at the end of this month.”
Here’s what that will mean for your redemptions
Oh the drama! First Iberia offered up to 90,000 points at a cost of around $300 for booking flights you never even need to take. That’s because the points were supposed to post right away, and expire if unused December 1, while flights could even be for next year.
Iberia started freezing accounts that took advantage of the promotion and coming up with reasons not to honor the deal for some members. However they honored the deal for most people and even have been unlocking some accounts and continuing to post bonus points.
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 »
