News and notes from around the interweb:
- United eliminates complimentary liquor in premium economy At the end of the day, Scott Kirby just can’t help himself.
- Delta more than doubles the cost of business class awards to Israel matching the devaluation of partner awards already in place for other destinations. No notice, natch. A roundtrip booked within 3 weeks of travel is now 390,000 miles and that is a saver award. SkyMiles really is a dumpster fire.
- Thai Vietjet is being investigated for violating Thailand’s lèse-majesté laws, insulting the king with an April Fools’ Day tweet suggesting they were launching a flight between Thai province Nan and Munich. The Thai king’s ‘consort’ lives in Munich, and he spends much of his time there.
He quarantined there at the start of Covid then briefly visited Thailand before returning to Germany for more ‘quarantining’ (at least I think that’s what the kids call it these days).
- The coolest airport in the country?
- We’ve seen this game on Southwest before. It passes the time. And it tells us how far we’ve come since the toilet paper shortages at the start of the pandemic!
Shoutout to @SouthwestAir for making this the most interesting flight delay ever with a…toilet paper race. pic.twitter.com/VUTgQenp6Z
— Marc Cohen (@MarcCohenNY) April 4, 2022
Dumb move United!
@ Gary — So few useful SkyMiles awards remain.
I simply don’t understand how a few extra minis on premium tickets move the needle on a 43.3 billion dollar company. That’s where your profit is on that ticket? Killing the booze?
@Jon. There will be no profit on that ticket as it won’t be sold. Competitors offer a better product.
Another year, another round of “Biggest ever bonus on Skymiles credit cards!” followed by “oh, they doubled redemption costs with no notice so that 25% bigger bonus doesn’t look so great.”
United wants to advertise quality but not actually deliver it.
AA is rising, UA is falling.
On Monday United says they want to be the best and most premium airline.
On Tuesday, United announces cuts.
So with the exception of a better seat, how is it premium economy?
it’s not a good idea for people to be drinking at all because drinking liquor destroys their health.
What violates Thai Lèse-majesté law? Just about anything the government thinks is a violation. Gary’s post and this comment included. The current Thai government seems to envy China’s “rule of law” and undisputed control over what its people can say publicly. My guess is the King is not insulted by the tweet. At least in the U.S., when someone is accused of defamation, truth is a defense.
I really don’t understand why anyone would value Skymiles from a credit card or redemption perspective. Delta redemption is just so ridiculous.
Wow: “United eliminates complimentary liquor in premium economy”?
Trans-Atlantic fares for this summer are running north of $2k for most routes right now and they want to cut out nip bottles? This is isn’t cost-saving, this is price gouging.
Could be worse. Could be as bad as Air Canada premium economy ….
Liquor is good for Greek life on colleges where men are otherwise too shy to open up and invite women back to their bedrooms for intercourse. Otherwise, like Drewry says, it’s bad for health and United is doing us all a favor.
United is starting to remind me of Putin. Don’t believe anything said. Judge solely be action.
I just got off premium economy on American Airlines, Philadelphia > Zurich, and they were only offering a red/white wine, stating all other alcohol was no longer available.
You don’t understand – next week is United’s announcement of their industry leading Premium Sober seats. No alcohol, no recline, no electronic devices, no reading material of any kind, you just sit there and take it. And every once in awhile, a flight attendant will walk by and rap you on the knuckles with a ruler for no reason other than they know you were thinking unclean thoughts. They’re still negotiating with the union about the new habit uniforms.