News and notes from around the interweb:
- The US Virgin Islands was given a federal grant to help them comply with the REAL ID Act, but the money was embezzled. Now the government has to decide whether to make a new grant for the same purpose.
- Alaska Airlines is offering double miles on cross country flights through end of year, registration required. (HT: One Mile at a Time) This stacks with Alaska’s cross country flight status challenge.
- American Airlines wants more inflight wifi partnerships like whitelisting Apple Music and selling their passenger eyeballs (and ears) to advertisers. With enough of others’ money it could even over airline President Robert Isom’s objections to free wifi.
- 1250 Voila Hotel Rewards points for liking them on Facebook and taking a quick survey
- Airline joint ventures draw greater scrutiny from regulators. In a world where there are significant barriers to entry (government-owned airports in the US, slot controls in part due to congested government-run airspace) along with active efforts to stymie new competitors it’s hard to argue for reducing the number of competitors. And I have genuinely not seen consumer benefit stemming from joint ventures that wasn’t equally possible through lesser forms of cooperation.
I’d favor both anti-trust immunity (indeed, eliminating restrictions on foreign ownership) and more open entry into aviation markets. Most airlines want to pick and choose.
- Previously spun off LATAM Multiplus is being taken private
- Man set up an automated instagram account and used it to eat in restaurants free something for the TBEX crowd to think about perhaps.
@ Gary– The Alaaka promo is NOT for qualifying miles.
yikes – i confused myself with the status challenge offer, fixed
If there’s anything I don’t like about Instagram, it’s the inability to add clickable hyperlinks within the body of IG story descriptions. They virtually make it impossible for affiliate marketers to organically capitalize because one has to indirectly ask people to copy and paste the link inside a story description, or click the link on the IG profile to be redirected to the affiliate offer. Your thoughts?
What kind of ATI expansion are you talking about?
Granting airlines (and more airlines) more anti-trust immunity than is already in play in parts? That is not a good solution for increased competition in the marketplace. Increased allowances for collusion/trust-like behavior doesn’t foster increased competition. And counting on intra-cartel cheating as a driver for greater competition isn’t much of a solution for anything but padding the profits of the cartel members at the longer-term expense of consumers.
Your post title is incorrect and should be corrected. Alaska is not offering Double Qualifying Miles on Transcon flights. By not identifying the carrier in your post and misstating the promotion, it multiplies the number of people clicking through on a post about a promotion that has been around for a few days.