In late October of last year we found out the future of American AAdvantage and US Airways Dividend Miles. The news was overwhelmingly positive, given all the negative changes we've seen from other airlines lately.
Perhaps the most interesting detail to members is that US Airways Dividend Miles will be merged into American AAdvantage sometime in the second quarter of 2015. While we don't have an exact date yet, this is when status between the two airlines will be fully reciprocal, when mileage totals will be combined, etc.
2015-AAdvantage
With that in mind, I've received a ton of questions as to what happens to US Airways Dividend Miles awards when the program ceases to exist.
It was just last year when US Airways transitioned from Star Alliance to oneworld, and that presented a challenge for award tickets. Basically, previously issued Star Alliance award tickets couldn't be changed to include oneworld segments. Instead you had to redeposit them entirely and rebook if you wanted any segments on oneworld.
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News and notes from around the interweb: Double Virgin America points through March 31. Registration required. Some commenters are reporting being told that Chase points transfers to Korean will return on January 25. I reached out again to Chase and got simply, “We anticipate the functionality returning soon.” Supreme Court rules air marshall didn’t violate […]
The post The World’s Busiest Airport Isn’t Atlanta, Double Flight Points Through March, and an Air Marshall Wins at the Supreme Court appeared first on View from the Wing.
La Compagnie is the French airline which launched flights around the middle of last year, offering all business class flights between Newark and Paris. Their launch was a bit hectic to say the least, though I also give them credit for staying true to their mission up until this point -- they're truly offering a (not so great) business class product basically at economy class prices.
So while my review of them wasn't stellar in comparison to other business class products, I think they add a hell of a lot of value to the market. For the fares they're charging, there's simply no other airline that can compete with them. For example, right now they're offering sub-$1,400 roundtrip business class fares between Newark and Paris.
Originally I gave them a few months at most, though I wasn't factoring in fuel prices. It goes without saying that they can survive as long as the economy is doing well and fuel prices are where they are (when either of those factors change, though...).
The post La Compagnie To Start Newark To London Flights March 29, 2015 appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
Although Winston-Salem, North Carolina is known more for tobacco than oil, it is home to the last Shell Oil clamshell station in the United States. Located on the quiet corner of Sprague and Peachtree Streets, the station sits abandoned, its two tall pumps now no more than curiosities.
In the 1930s, a local distributor of Shell called Quality Oil built seven stations in Winston-Salem and one in the nearby town of Kernersville. Joe Glenn and Bert Bennett, who had acquired the distribution, erected the clamshells as advertisements; their quirkiness intended to draw customers.
The clamshell stations represented the transformation of a brand into a building, a symbol into a real thing. When Raymond Loewy designed the current Shell symbol in 1971, it had already gone though many incarnations. Although the original 1901 brand for the London-based Shell Transport and Trading Company was a mussel shell, by 1904 the scallop shell was introduced – possibly from the family coat of arms of the company’s founder Marcus Samuel, whose business would merge with Royal Dutch Petroleum Company to form Royal Dutch-Shell Oil. Samuel had a habit of naming his tankers after different kinds of shells, and he had a background importing objects from the Far East, including beautiful shells.
It wasn’t easy to make shell-shaped gas stations. The office and bathroom area were boxed in, surrounded by a bent wood and wire frame, and then covered in stucco. This last station remained open until the 1950s and housed a lawn mower repair business in the 1970s and 80s. In 1976, it became the first individual station in America to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Formerly a regional office for Preservation North Carolina, now the clamshell is a shrine to itself. On the walls inside hang framed newspaper articles about its opening and a clamshell station calendar. Antique black-and-white photographs line the shelves, which also display a teddy bear, old Shell signs, a coffee mug, miscellaneous antique cans, and a tin of vintage Monkey Grip Patch. A coffee table book has been left open to a picture of the station. In one corner sits an antique red container labeled Shell.
Preservation North Carolina still holds protective covenants on the property, so the clamshell will be preserved in perpetuity.
