The Wire
What changed this week in loyalty and premium travel — devaluations, new routes, program shake-ups — and whether you should care.
The longest route Alaska has ever flown, the only nonstop between Athens and the US West Coast, and business class already loading at 95,000 points to Paris. A US airline is quietly building a long-haul network.
Seatback entertainment returns to every mainline narrowbody, premium seating goes from a quarter of the cabin to nearly half, and the first aircraft arrives in 2028. Progress, at the pace of a fleet plan.
The 60,000-mile business award to Europe survives. What it buys does not. Air France-KLM is splitting every award into three tiers on September 8, and only one of them is the deal you remember.
Single-cabin upgrades, Admirals Club prices up 60-75%, a $695 credit card, and a cash-and-miles button. Four announcements, one strategy, two deadlines worth knowing.
Starting October 26, an Istanbul airline sells lie-flat seats on the Singapore-Sydney corridor. Fifth freedom routes are where award travelers eat, and a new one just opened.
Air Canada sold a 25% stake in Aeroplan to a Blackstone-led group at a C$10 billion valuation. Nothing changes for your points today. The clock that just started is the story.
A 100% bonus into IHG. A 25% bonus into Frontier. A 20% bonus into Flying Blue. Only one of those is worth taking, and the percentages tell you nothing about which.
Three years running, AAdvantage has held the status thresholds flat — genuinely rare, genuinely good. Now read the rest of the announcement, where the reward ladder quietly got cheaper to fund.
Boeing's flagship has slipped to 2027 and taken $15 billion in charges with it. The problem for points people isn't the plane — it's every premium cabin that was designed to launch on it.
Every major US airline killed distance-based earning a decade ago. Atmos Rewards is bringing the option back — and that's either the smartest differentiation in domestic loyalty or a very good deal with an expiry date.
Air Canada refreshed the Aeroplan award chart this summer, and if you’ve been sitting on a pile of points waiting for the “right moment,” I have some mildly annoying news: the right moment was probably a few months ago.
Delta has launched “Basic Business,” and I want you to sit with that phrase for a second, because it is doing a lot of work.
There is a transfer bonus running that you should probably care about, and depending on when you’re reading this, you may need to move quickly.
There was a time when Etihad Airways looked like it belonged in the same sentence as Emirates without any qualification.