Tasmania’s Sweet Election Promise: Visit The World’s Largest Chocolate Fountain [Roundup]

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • The Premier of Tasmania vows that, if re-elected, he’ll build the world’s largest chocolate fountain Government tourism projects are usually complete boondoggles but I’m here for it.

  • 25% bonus transferring Chase points to Air France KLM Flying Blue through April 30, 2024.


    KLM Boeing 787-9 Business Class

  • Environmental Impact Statements aren’t pro-environment tools, they are a means to stop development even of green energy projects. Just getting to approval of the statement for Amtrak’s Union Station renovation took… nine years?

  • American Airlines will protect Acapulco passengers on Aeromexico to Mexico City.

  • American Airlines is terminating its frequent flyer partnership with Silver Airways.

  • Singapore Airlines is improving premium economy with amenity kits, better champagne and new dining.

  • Like American, Virgin Atlantic now offers priority boarding to its frequent flyer members. This creates an incentive to join their program, and isn’t offered to economy passengers with partner account numbers in their booking.

About Gary Leff

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 »

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Comments

  1. Not sure why your video for the “Surprising Airlines That Cancel The Most” prominently features Alaska, when they are one of the best at NOT canceling flights.

  2. Environmentalists make it so ot requires more time, money and resources to accomplish any task. Wasting resources is bad for the environment. Worse though is all the worthwhile things that never get done because of their bureaucratic red tape. China built an entire countrywide high speed rail network in the same California did environmental impact studies on one line, before giving up. This can’t go on.

  3. Environmental review type laws actually end up being harder on green projects. If an environmental review is delaying a pipeline supported by the right, the right can attack the process and argue for it to be expedited in the name of progress, and sometimes that can happen if they have the political power. But if its a green project like high speed rail that the right opposes and the left supports, the left cannot risk attacking the process or demanding shortcuts for fear of splitting their own coalition.

  5. @Gary – So are you asserting that Environmental Impact Statements are not studying environmental impact? I agree that nine years to complete one is ludicrous but asserting that it doesn’t do the one thing that it’s specifically stated to do is a bold claim.

  6. @Christian – my claim is that what the National Environmental Policy Act has primarily done is to introduce veto points into the process that make development costly and time-consuming, and that this applies even to important developments that would be environmentally beneficial. It’s nearly impossible to build green energy because of the veto points created by NEPA!

    Update: how about nearly two decades in environmental review? https://twitter.com/RikAdamski/status/1769381488552800387

  8. I’m curious about the Silver situation. AA says the only within-Caribbean flights you can book with points are on Seaborne Airlines — apparently ruling out the handful of BA flights. But Seaborne is part of Silver; the latter is prominently featured on seaborneairlines.com, and searches there are redirected to flysilver.com.

    So presumably that’s now out, along with the other losses mentioned in the various blogs.

Comments are closed.