News and notes from around the interweb:
- Don’t forget to check Hilton MVP discount rates
- Just as Marriott started removing porn from hotels when customers stopped buying it American Airlines will no longer accept cash on regional flights. Effective yesterday,
American Eagle operators will accept all major debit and credit cards, making American cashless across all flights. We continue to align our mainline and regional customer experience so customers have a seamless experience and similar products on both American and American Eagle.
- American is increasing service to Caracas even after the Venezuelan government held onto three quarters of a billion dollars of the airline’s money. A new requirement that airlines purchase fuel in a currency US airlines cannot hold will make that service more complicated.
- Smart luggage maker Bluesmart is shutting down and selling off its technology in the face of bans by major airlines (HT: Jonathan W.)
- Emirates lounge at New York JFK about to reopen.
We're expecting it this week, Howard. We hope it will be available from today.
— Emirates Support (@EmiratesSupport) May 2, 2018
- A man sitting next to screaming children on an American Airlines flight helped their mom calm them down
- An autopsy of the dog United killed in an overhead bin found that the cause of death was suffocation. (HT: Point Me to the Plane)
- British Airways explains Britishness to Americans. Oddly they leave out the part about the droll sense of irony and the insistence on defending BA’s inferior product. (God Save the Points)
Regarding the Hilton “discount trick”, should this be of concern from the Hilton web site: “We reserve the right to cancel or modify reservations where it appears that a customer has engaged in fraudulent or inappropriate activity or under other circumstances where it appears that the reservations contain or resulted from a mistake or error.”?
Re fuel purchases in Petrolatium; perhaps AA views that lost $$ as a marketing expense for when the country finally crumbles in ashes and the masses want to visit their abuela once again. That’s sort of like a loyalty program, ha! Apparently in AA mgmt minds it works for 3rd world dictatorships but not the entire free world.
They provide that warning about other corporate rates as well. The thing to note about MVP rates is that it is increasingly hard to find, probably because too many people have been using it.
AA can just fly 757’s to Venezuela that can be fueled in the USA and flown back without taking on new fuel locally. Obviously taking off fully loaded adds weight/cost, but AA seems to think flying to Venezuela is profitable or they wouldn’t keep doing it…
Hilton has always been a great hotel to stay at.