News & Notes For Friday, October 26th

Might not be important for everyone, but hey, I thought they were all newsworthy. 🙂

American Airlines is talking expansion.  They’re talking international expansion, which is music to my ears.  I prefer to redeem my miles to cool places all over the world, so more options on my favorite domestic airline is always a good thing.  They’re talking about adding stops to Germany, South Korea, Peru as well as a few smaller cities in the Midwest.  All good things, especially as it seems to indicate AA is getting stronger.

US Airways and AA are meeting next week to talk more about a merger.  I still can’t tell how I feel about a US/AA merger, but I’m definitely more in favor of it if AA is the dominant management team going forward.  As I’ve written in the past, Doug Parker is unlikely to let that happen without some kicking and screaming.  But, don’t worry, with all this good news, the AA pilots are still out of their friggin’ minds.

The reports about delays in the United 787 schedule seem to be more fact than rumor now.  This is bad news for some of the airline junkies who quickly jumped on tickets to get out there on one of the first flights.  But, I doubt it will be long before these issues are ironed out.  I’m still pretty geeked up about the 787, especially after my flight to Tokyo in April, so I’m glad to see the possibility of more travel on this game-changing plane coming up.

And, on a lighter note, Mommy Points has good news about a small but impactful change on the Hyatt website.  I might not go all the way to “most exciting Hyatt improvement of the year”, but there was a time when this truly annoyed me and I couldn’t wait for them to fix it.  But, then, Hyatt assigned me a Private Line Concierge to handle all my reservations and I’m pretty spoiled.  Now, my 100-ish nights a year get booked by a very thorough, competent, polite young lady who makes my life so much easier.  Heck, she even called a hotel for me this week to get a Thanksgiving brunch menu without me asking her to do so.  I so LOVE great customer service.

So, I don’t have to worry about the credit card field anymore.  But, it’s great to see Hyatt focusing on details like this.  Their website has not been one of their strongest attributes in the past, so attention there is bound to resonate with customers.