News and notes from around the interweb:
- Jet Airways suspended a pilot “over allegations that he assaulted a woman and hurled racist abuse at another passenger on a domestic flight.”
Strikingly an article in Arabian Business over an incident on a domestic flight in India references United Airlines having a passenger dragged off a flight.
- El Al is considering ditching first class and offering a new ‘premium’ cabin between business and economy with good seats but coach service.
- Southwest Airlines says they will stop overbooking flights. JetBlue doesn’t oversell flights, but their involuntary denied boardings are relatively high because of aircraft swaps.
- Capital One eating subprime credit card losses (HT: Alan H.)
- More than one passenger had cocaine in their underpants on the same flight to New York
- Wyndham Rewards sees its revampled, simplified rewards program now with elite benefits and the ability to redeem points for timeshares as a key driver of profit going forward.
Wyndham Worldwide is more committed than ever to using what CEO Holmes called its “blue thread,” the Wyndham Rewards loyalty program, to generate more business for all of its businesses, especially timeshares.
The company plans to rely heavily on its loyalty program to generate more timeshare tours among its hotel guests, which could potentially lead to increased timeshare sales.
The Wyndham Rewards program, which was relaunched in 2015 to appeal to “everyday travelers,” now has more than 50 million members, 79 percent of whom are redeeming their points through the program. Since its revamp the program has received a number of accolades for its simpler, more straightforward approach to hotel loyalty.
The El Al article is in Hebrew.
@Dave and built-in browser translations are incredibly helpful!
I think the SWA news is the start of a very bad trend. I am sure some advocates are cheering these $10,000 payments for volunteering (that we will never get), and all this no more overbooking news.
But these are businesses, and without overbooking, especially on southwest where I change my flights constantly, they will make less money. So this will mean:
-higher fares
-elimination of SWA’s canel 10 minutes before your flight benefit
-likely fees for changes on SWA
So a few benefit, Mr. Dao gets nicely rich (I do think United should be fined, but I think they should pay to a charity, not him), and the rest of us will suffer.
Just my two cents…
Gary, Google Translate combined with a clueless Israeli journalist makes for a confusing story. The article is referring to Premium Economy
NO!!! The past few years I’ve had 100% success getting bumped from my Southwest Sunday-after-Thanksgiving flight, and I used the vouchers to book my Christmas flight. Sad to see that go away. Guess I need to sign up for another Southwest credit card… :/