I’ve given United a try for a few years now, with 1K status the last two years. United has disappointed in upgrade percentage, availability of Wi-Fi, drastic cuts to the schedule that impact my ability to get to where I need quickly and arbitrary changes to policies like award redemption and carry-on bags that just plain make flying not fun.
I’ve been playing the travel game, collecting miles and points, for well over a decade now. While it’s gotten harder to find all the perfect flights, there’s still plenty of fun to be had. I’ve been planning a family trip this summer to Italy…
2014 is a less than brave new world in the airline industry. If you haven’t been paying attention, Delta and United have instituted spending requirements to achieve elite status on an annual basis along with the existing mile/segment requirements. Since my first United Premier…
I woke up this morning to an announcement on Milepoint by United Airlines about award chart increases. At first, I didn’t really think it was that bad. But, the more I dug into it, more I realized this was a bit of a “Black…
I posted quickly yesterday some initial thoughts on the lawsuit that the US Department of Justice filed to block the American Airlines/US Airways merger. I spent some more time yesterday and this morning and have a few more things to offer up. I went…
Looks like United previewed some upcoming changes to their program this morning on Milepoint. Following Delta’s move earlier this year, United is adding a spending requirement to achieve elite status. Quoting from their post: Starting in January 2014, Premier qualification for members living in…
It seems to be my theme this week to review useful travel apps. I stumbled across ExpertFlyer’s iPhone app a couple of days ago and posted my thoughts. Then, this morning, I saw an article on Seat Guru’s new iPhone app. A bit of…
Scott McCartney has a good piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about people spending money to achieve status, either by taking flights they don’t need to take or “buying up”. No question, I’m a status snob. But, status is more then just a seat…
Okay, so it’s early. But, I definitely like what I’m seeing. I just checked in for my flight tomorrow on United using my iPhone 6 and successfully moved my boarding pass to Passbook. I wrote about Passbook recently and was pretty pumped about the…
View From The Wing has two juicy tidbits today, one that was more affirmation of something I suspected, the other a bit of a surprise about an airline I spend a fair time flying and criticizing. First, Gary notes that Hyatt has pretty much…