Tag Archives for united.
United failed to open a single Polaris business class lounge in 2017. As American opened four of its own business lounges between June and December, United was left only with its first Chicago outpost.
At the end of the year the airline even removed the timetable for Polaris lounge openings.
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.
On December 29, United Airlines flight UA809 flew from Orange County California to Denver. The Airbus A320 took off from runway 20R and climbed safely to its cruising altitude.
However a fuel cap fell off the plane and down ‘a few thousand feet’ out of the sky, ‘smashing’ onto the hood of a car driving down Park Avenue on Balboa Island.
Paul Wall has been rapping for 20 years. He used to release albums with Chamillionaire. He’s had a modest acting career and some video games. And apparently he flies regularly on a friend’s buddy pass.
And he got his friend fired.
American Airlines status challenges cost money to sign up for and include a minimum spend requirement although the airline also occasionally will directly status match a United or Delta top tier elite member.
In a rare instance of Delta following American (although to be fair Delta was first with minimum spend for elite status) their elite status challenge program requires minimum spend not just minimum travel. And there’s on other change as well.
China is always ‘the next big thing.’ That was true 10 years ago and it seems like it will be true 10 years from now.
Airlines are betting big on China, since the U.S. and China don’t have Open Skies airlines have to fight for the best routes and then squat on them hoping they’ll be more valuable in the future. In a sense it’s like Havana service but with bigger stakes.
“Enhancements” are the bane of every frequent flyer’s existence. For years that word has been mocked because every devaluation, every cut, every dimunition in service is described as an enhancement. It may also be described as the result of “listening to customers.”
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.
Yesterday’s United Airlines Chicago – Hong Kong flight UA895 had to divert to Anchorage because a passenger kept “smearing feces everywhere” according to airport police.
He also took off his shirt and tried to stuff it in the toilet.
Back in July, I wrote up a primer on securing Star Alliance awards. In it, I alluded to Starnet, the system that United uses for booking these awards for Mileage Plus members. Its search capabilities are primitive (you often can find better availability searching segment-by-segment that you can telling the agent your origina and destination, simply because it doesn’t search many possible connections). But most vexxing for frequent flyers is that the system filters availability. That is, a partner airline may be offering a seat for award redemption — but United’s system will still tell you it’s unavailable. The agent will usually blame the partner (“they aren’t offering any seats”) when that isn’t true at all. Instead, United doesn’t want to pay for the seat. United is known to ‘filter out’ availability especially of Luftansa…
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 »
