Citi premium card looks complicated at first, but the real value is straightforward once you know how the credits post. The Strata Elite’s hotel, Splurge, Blacklane, Priority Pass, and Admirals Club benefits can make the first cardmember year far more lucrative than the $595 fee suggests.
Air India sent passengers on a 14-hour flight to nowhere after dispatching a leased ex-Delta Boeing 777 that did not have enough emergency oxygen for the route it was flying. Much of the early coverage blamed the aircraft type or Canada paperwork, but the real problem appears to have been that this specific subfleet was not properly configured for the terrain-critical routing.
A Frontier Airlines passenger being removed from a flight under police escort suddenly turned and attacked another traveler who was filming her from a nearby seat.
Denver Airport lost power, the trains went down, and passengers were suddenly stuck with no easy way out of the terminal. Plus, Chicago making hotel taxes the highest in the nation, a line to enter the American Airlines Admirals Club in Miami, and more stupidity.
Canadian and U.S. fighter jets were scrambled to escort two flights bound for Montreal after authorities realized one passenger was traveling under a false identity after using stolen Aeroplan points to book the trip.
A dad sprinting from lounger to lounger to claim pool chairs for his family has become a kind of folk hero of the resort vacation — because too many hotels now make “relaxation” feel like a competitive sport. At some properties, guests line up before dawn, race to the pool when gates open, or even sleep overnight on beach chairs just to secure a spot for the day. That is exactly why I try to avoid what I think of as ‘resort factories.’ Once a vacation requires early alarms, towel strategy, and a run for scarce lounge chairs, the hotel has already failed at the basic job of making guests feel at ease. If you have to get down to the beach or pool before 8 a.m. to have any hope of getting a chair,…
Citi launched a new premium credit card into an already crowded market — and it’s getting a lot of attention. Between a 75,000-point bonus, transferable points including American Airlines, and credits that can be used twice in the first year, the value can easily exceed the card’s annual fee.
American Airlines did not just lose ground in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago because competition got tougher. Former CEO Doug Parker’s own explanation of route profitability helps reveal a deeper mistake: the airline treated credit card revenue like generic redemption revenue, instead of tying it to the markets and flights that actually made customers choose AAdvantage cards in the first place.
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom just gave investors an unusually direct promise about AAdvantage: he said the airline intends to keep its miles more valuable for travel than competing programs. That matters because loyalty is American’s biggest profit engine, and Isom is effectively arguing that the airline will grow credit card revenue by making AAdvantage more attractive to customers — not by gutting redemption value.
The line to get into the Delta Sky Clubs in Orlando and New York LaGuardia stretch through the terminal. Delta admits its pilot contract has made meltdown recovery harder, American adds premium economy hot entree pre-orders on some long routes, and politicians still want airport rules that do not apply to them.
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 »
