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As the year winds down and the scramble for elite status revs up, many frequent flyers are having to decide just how much they value elite benefits. Today, TPG Senior Points & Miles Correspondent Jason Steele looks at US Airways Dividend Miles Preferred status, and sets out to quantify each benefit in order to make those decisions easier.Over the last week, TPG looked at the value of American Airlines elite status, while I examined the value of elite status with Delta and United....

The airline industry’s dalliance with reintroducing nostalgia brands has been largely a bust so far. Storied airline names from the past like Braniff, Eastern, Pan Am, National, and People Express have been welcomed back with copious amounts of hype, only to expire quickly. In the US, the relaunched Frontier Airlines brand name has been one of the few successful reboots.So it came as bit of a surprise that the next name to be resurrected from the vaults of aviation history would be a much lesser-known airline, World Airways....

The main hall of Lower Manhattan’s massive transportation hub is finally open to the public. Over the weekend, TPG Editor-in-Chief Zach Honig dropped by to check out the city’s $4 billion investment.Last week, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced that the main hall of the city’s new transit hub, called the “Oculus,” was finally open to the public. The second level and all of the retail spaces remain closed, unfortunately, but if you want to head into the main hall to grab a selfie or two (like the dozens of other people I saw over the weekend), you’re more than welcome to do so....

Japan Airlines announced on Monday it wants to launch a low-cost carrier, offering medium- and long-haul flights for cheap. JAL follows a trend set by European airlines that have started low-cost, long-haul divisions, such as British Airways and Iberia with Level and Air France with Joon.Exact details remain scarce — even the name of the airline. However, JAL did say that its new low-cost carrier will be based at Tokyo’s Narita Airport (NRT) and will offer flights to the Americas, Asia and Europe....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.TPG confirmed Saturday that American Airlines is launching a new “Hotel, Meal and Transportation” system (HMT) for passengers who experience irregular operations. The program will use digital technology to replace paper vouchers for hotels and meals in cases of delay, allowing customer service agents to distribute vouchers via passenger email address....

As if Airbnb doesn’t have enough on its plate taking on the hotel industry, the company today announced a slew of new options for its free app that go way beyond home rentals. In a presentation at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles, founder Brian Chesky explained that the company is “adding the magic” back to travel by focusing on people and passions — instead of just places.With a new platform called Trips, users can buy or sell “Experiences,” ranging from truffle hunting to surf lessons....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.American Airlines is giving away free seats to the Oneworld Mega Do and a bunch of miles via their Video Blogger promotion. Simply create a 30-60 second video on why you should be selected (sounds a little familiar!...

Baltia, the nearly 30-year-old “startup” US airline that has never flown a single commercial flight, was slapped with a $22 million default judgment, and its largest shareholder was arrested on financial fraud charges, newly surfaced legal documents show.The judgment comes after almost three decades of complicated and sketchy financial maneuvering from Baltia. Initially, the airline’s business model was based on operating a 747-200 between New York and St. Petersburg, Russia. The startup carrier promised for years that flights would be starting soon....

Delta recently acquired a large portion of the US Airways terminal at LaGuardia as part of a slot swap that gave US Airways more slots at Washington National airport. This expansion is part of an overall strategy to gain dominance in the New York City market- they also are in the process of completely renovating JFK, which sorely needs it.I’ve flown out of the new LaGuardia terminal and it’s only mildly annoying to have to take a 20 second bus between the two terminals (they are building a walkway)....

Already en route to becoming the world’s largest airport, London Heathrow Airport (LHR) was ranked the most internationally connected airport in the world, according to OAG’s 2018 Megahubs Index for the second year in a row.According to the OAG blog, the index is “calculated as the ratio of all possible scheduled international connections that could be made by passengers in a six-hour window to the number of destinations served by the airport....

Today, I want to share a story from TPG reader Brian, whose plan to avoid fuel surcharges on a business-class award backfired. Here’s what he had to say:I recently redeemed Avios points for myself, my wife and our infant son from Madrid to Chicago in business class on Iberia. I originally booked through British Airways Executive Club, which allows award redemptions for infant tickets. Several weeks after booking, however, I realized I could transfer my Avios from British Airways to Iberia Plus and book the same exact flight with almost half of the fuel surcharges....

A Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Bali made an emergency landing on Sunday due to an apparent affair gone awry. With the help of an iPhone, a female passenger on the plane reportedly discovered mid-flight that her husband was cheating on her.Fox News reports that the wife accessed her husband’s phone by unlocking it with his finger while he was asleep. The wife was then seen hitting her husband persistently....

You may never have heard of it, but ITB Berlin is the world’s largest travel trade show, making it the perfect place for airlines to make big announcements and unveil new products. For example, last year, Qatar unveiled its Qsuite for the first time. Just a year later, Qatar is making news again.In an entertaining press conference, which Qatar CEO Akbar Al Baker is well known for, Qatar announced new Qsuite routes, plans on how the airline is finally going to launch its perpetually delayed Las Vegas route and a bunch of new routes in Europe and Asia....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.I detailed the Stash Hotel rewards program last fall and to sum it up, it’s basically a decent way to earn points at independent hotels. While the earning/redeeming ratio (you earn roughly 5% of your spend to use on future stays) isn’t as lucrative as the major hotel chains who can provide 50%+ returns if you play them correctly, the program can still provide a decent value, especially if you are planning to stay at one of their 120 hotels anyway....

After widespread European pilot strikes roiled budget carrier Ryanair all summer, the low-cost airline’s staffing woes aren’t quite behind it yet.Ryanair’s German pilots announced plans for another walkout on Wednesday to protest wages and work conditions. The German pilots’ union Condemning the Cockpit was calling for a 24-hour strike for about 400 of the airline’s pilots and co-pilots, the Local reports. German-based cabin crew unions also called for a walkout of about 1,000 crew members, the Independent says....

For last week’s Thursday Giveaway I was offering 2 free American Airlines Admirals Club day passes and the winner’s choice of two of my Elite Rewards, American’s incentive program for elite flyers who go above and beyond their status qualification thresholds – which you can now qualify for with miles, segments or points, and where you get your choice of gifts as soon as you hit a threshold.To enter, you just had to leave a comment on my post with what amenities your perfect airline lounge would have and why – anything from a celebrity chef menu, to what kind of spa they would have....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.I’m going to Rio for New Years, so now that I’m done with my international mileage run, it was time to apply for a tourist visa. Brazil requires a touruist visa for all US citizens (in reciprocity for the fee the US charges Brazilians to visit) so my journey to secure a tourist visas had several steps....

A big trend among airlines is to roll out new, fancy business class products to woo the premium business traveler, who seems to be out and traveling once again as the globaly economy chugs along to (hopefully) brighter days. But what about the huge majority of passengers who fly in economy? Luckily some airlines are throwing coach class passengers a bone (like Delta’s recently announced improvements to their transcontinental economy and Economy Comfort cabins), but sadly there are still plenty of uncomfortable seats out there....

A 70-year-old traveler is alive today because of TSA agent Tony D’Amico’s quick thinking last Wednesday at Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport (MKE).An unnamed elderly man collapsed to the ground Wednesday morning, just after passing through security at Concourse D. D’Amico and two other supervisors working in a nearby office heard the loud thump and ran out to find the man lying on the floor, arms extended and shaking uncontrollably, while another passenger tried to hold him after his fall....

Airline quarterly earnings conference calls can generally be rather boring: prepared statements from the airline’s management, financial data and questions from financial analysts about financial minutia. All of that mundanity can come to a sharp end when it’s time for the press to start asking questions. (This is especially true when its an airline that just made international news for bloodying and then dragging a customer off one of its planes....