It should come as no surprise that the lead story on this week’s episode is the lead aviation-related story in the news, the crash of Asiana 214 at SFO last Saturday. We don’t dwell too much on it, though there is some discussion of the event itself as well as the media responses to it. Not surprisingly we aren’t all that impressed for the most part, though NTSB Director Hersman has very much earned our respect.
Asiana is one of the airlines that I’ll be flying as part of a RTW trip I booked – part award and part revenue – later this year. There’s one segment I won’t be flying with them on where it was an option. Why skip Asiana for a Thai-operated flight between the same cities and at the same time? There actually is a good reason. Stephan also recently put together a RTW award trip and we talk about the planning which went into that award, too.
British Airways now has both the A380 and the 787 in their fleet and they hosted a bit of a party at Heathrow last week to celebrate. They also launched an intro sale on the 787 routes. Not bad prices but nothing in the $380 range. (And it turns out the sale is over; whoopsie.)
For people looking to get in to the first class cabin on A380s flights out of Colombo to the USA used to be a great option. Alas, the fare (one I flew on 18+ months ago and which was around long before that) was refiled and is now quite a bit higher. Time to find the next great score.
Which brings us to two ridiculous tales from Australia. One involves a guy who racked up 380,000 points via a credit card promo with ill-defined T&Cs. He’s not happy with the results and is pushing for an additional ~300,000 points to be credited. The other involves two guys who were thrown off a plane and who are now suing Qantas. But rather than seeking cash they’re going after 60 million FF points. Doesn’t make much sense to me in so many ways.
United opened up access to award seats on Eva, the newest Star Alliance partner, on their website last week. Less than 12 hours later it was pulled. It seems there were some technical issues with the implementation. Whoopsie. Eva awards are still searchable through other sites such as Aeroplan or ANA and can be booked on the phone.
And, finally, a topic that we apparently know nothing about. Hertz has devalued their program. None of us seem to care or know exactly what changed, but it happened.
All that and more on this week’s episode.
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If you do a car rental comparison program, I would love to present on the different programs. I did a similar overview in Chicago a couple years ago.