News and notes from around the interweb:
- Use points transfers to boost your Marriott lifetime points total and secure lifetime status before the lifetime program changes at the end of the year.
- Normally Marriott’s meetings program bonuses 50,000 points per contract max but right now there’s a 150,000 point offer.
- Qatar Airways will report a ‘substantial loss’ this year which they attribute to the blockade led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE that drives up costs by forcing them to fly longer routes around the blockade and takes 18 destinations off their route map.
- United says they’re speeding up delivery of reconfigured planes with Polaris business class seats, but the slow rollout to date was a mismatch with United’s early marketing and a lost opportunity.
In the meantime, customers don’t always realize the Polaris service may or may not come with the Polaris seat, said Gary Leff, a travel expert who writes the View from the Wing blog.
“There’s been some frustration from people who want the better product and think they’re getting it because it’s been heavily advertised,” Leff said.
…Leff thinks United missed a chance to decisively change passengers’ perception of the quality of its business-class cabin by announcing Polaris well before most passengers could reliably get the full experience.
“It’s going to take longer for people to come around to the idea that United has a product they want,” he said.
- NFL player arrested for joking about bringing bomb to the airport
- United will board enough gel pillows for all business class passengers. Bedding is the strongest point of United’s business product.
And yet with every trick, game, scam and con available to them, including the fake meetings, dodgy transfers, gift certificates, others, some of those MR people continue to insist how terribly hard it is to quailify for LT status ( and in fairness, for the vast majority who do it ‘the old fashioned way’, it still is). Pity that Marriott continues to facilitate status for the con merchants while denying others, including their own members.
Kirby is an absolute idiot. To not take into account AA’s problems with Zodiac and assume Polaris wouldn’t have any delays, is moronic. Take that plus the bonus fiasco, I don’t see how he has his job still. Munoz needs a fall guy and he’s it.
Gary: As a longtime Marriott LT Plat, I guess I’ll be something new as of Aug 1 — LT Plat Pro. What does this do that Plat doesn’t?