Northwest Airlines
Iraq may not be among Western travelers’ most desired destinations quite yet, but some of the world’s leading airlines have decided that flying to the war-ravaged country can be profitable, so they are returning there after a 20-year absence.
Although two of Europe’s major carriers — Austrian Airlines and Turkish Airlines — have been serving Iraq since 2008, their re-entry in that market was viewed as only moderately significant at the time, and none of their peers followed suit.
Austrian chose Erbil, the capital of Kurdish northern Iraq, which was never nearly as violent as the rest of the country. Turkish began flying to Baghdad, as well as Erbil, but Turkey is not a European Union member. Neither carrier has a truly global network to connect Iraq with many other countries on different continents…
How would you feel if you were detained for more than a week upon arrival in a foreign country for reasons that had nothing to do with you — and you missed your meeting or never even made it to your destination?
Thousands of passengers to Asia, where governments have implemented the most draconian measures to prevent the spread of swine flu, have been facing that prospect every day for two weeks. Unfortunately, in most cases, they were not given all the information they needed in advance so they could plan accordingly.
Beginning April 28, dozens of planes arriving daily in Japan from North America have been held after landing until a team of health inspectors — wearing yellow protective gear, masks, goggles and gloves — takes everyone’s temperature with scanners and reviews filled-out questionnaires…
How public is the publicly available information about the limited seats airlines release for mileage redemption on their flights? Can anyone take that information from an airline without permission and publish it on their own Web site, even with the best of intentions?
A frequent flier from the San Francisco Bay Area tried to do just that last month, but he was forced to shut down his site in less than a week.
“Mystified by the inner workings of inventory management” at United Airlines, he created a model that searched and analyzed “award” availability on several routes served by United “on a nightly basis,” he wrote in a March 18 self-promoting post on FlyerTalk.com, one of the largest online travel communities…
Continue reading about Is ‘award’-seat data held by copyright?
Are you resigned to being kicked off the airline elite-status wagon because your travel has dropped significantly this year? Don’t give up quite yet. The trips you make in the next couple of months could earn you double miles that count toward your status, so you could maintain it with half the normally required travel.
It has been rather amusing, though hardly surprising given the persistent slump in demand for seats, in the last two weeks to watch the so-called U.S. legacy carriers match and sometimes outbid each other in their efforts to entice more customers to buy tickets.
You might have heard about the various fare discounts currently on offer, including prices to Europe of just more than $400, including taxes and fees, which haven’t been seen in years…
Continue reading about Airline elite status now easier to earn
Do you consider yourself one of the most loyal customers of the airline you fly most frequently? Are you starting to feel like your loyalty is no longer being sufficiently rewarded? It may be time to rethink your strategy.
It’s no secret that, little by little, U.S. airlines have been reducing elite benefits in the last several months — decreasing the frequent-flier miles you can earn for flights but increasing the number of miles needed to redeem “awards,” while adding various new fees.
Although most of those “enhancements” — as the airlines call them to constant mocking by their customers — affect all loyalty-scheme members, top-tier elite passengers seem to be hit particularly hard. Those are the people most commonly designated as platinum members, who fly at least 75,000 or 100,000 miles a year, depending on the carrier…
Continue reading about Is airline elite status still worth it?
