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There are few people in the airline industry with the entrepreneurial record of David Neeleman. He founded Morris Air in 1984 and JetBlue in 1998 — the former ended up being acquired by Southwest in 1988, and the latter is today one of the biggest airlines in the US. In 2008, after moving to Brazil, he successfully launched another airline, Azul. Now, he’s setting his sights on a new challenge: Making Portugal into an air travel gateway between the Americas and Europe....

JetBlue is the latest airline to jump on the trend of tightening its emotional support animal policy.The carrier announced on Tuesday that it’s introducing new requirements for both emotional support and psychiatric service animals in addition to only allowing certain types of pets. As of July 1, 2018, travelers bringing an emotional support or psychiatric service animal will be required to submit advance notice and proper documentation to JetBlue in order to bring the animal on board....

What would the world be like without LeBron James? We may never know, but it was once possible, according to the man himself.On December 11, the NBA superstar appeared on UNINTERRUPTED’s Road Trippin’ podcast with teammate Dwayne Wade and recounted a terrifying time on a team trip. LeBron had complained to the team’s management about how old the team’s aircraft was when he joined the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2003.A few years into his career, LeBron brought up the subject again with the Cav’s new owner, Dan Gilbert, who again brushed off his comments....

Concerts are supposed to be a relaxing and fun experience, but traveling to them can sometimes be the opposite of just that. Getting dropped off on the wrong side of a giant stadium could mean a whole lot of walking until you get to your seat.However, ride-hailing company Lyft and the ticket selling platform SeatGeek have teamed up to remove tension from the experience.Lyft will integrate information from SeatGeek into its own app — allowing riders to enter detailed information about their destination so they can be dropped off at the sport or concert venue’s entrance that’s closest to their seat....

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.Passengers were left in the dark Wednesday night at Reagan National Airport (DCA) — literally. However, power has since been restored as of Thursday after the airport-wide outage left terminals completely dark and lasted more than an hour on Wednesday night....

In a meeting today held in the State Dining Room of the White House between President Donald Trump and executives from many of the nation’s airlines and airports, the President reiterated his desire to upgrade the nation’s air infrastructure and indicated he would like a pilot to head the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).“Our airports used to be the best. Now they’re at the bottom of the rung,” Trump told the assembled group....

I just had lunch the other day with a good friend of mine who redeemed 5,000 SPG points for tickets to see Madonna in Milan where tickets were going for well over $200, so he got at least 4 cents per point. I’ve redeemed in the past with SPG Moments and have generally gotten excellent seats and received the tickets in the mail soon after redeeming the points.That being said, generally using points and miles for auctions is a poor redemption value compared to simply redeeming for airline or free hotel night awards....

This is a guest post from my dad, Grandpa Points. He and my mom are in their 60’s, are (mostly) retired,and are ticking off “bucket list” destinations quicker than they ever thought possible thanks to miles, points, and travel deals. They have an intense love of this country, of its National Parks and treasures, and have no problem with a clean budget hotel room and an economy airline seat on a budget airline as long as it gets them where they want to be....

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the best times to buy Thanksgiving airfare, and now it’s time to start considering your December holiday travel plans.As I said before, it can be darn near impossible to figure out when exactly you should buy your holiday airfares—after all, we’ve probably all experienced that sinking feeling of seeing a fare that we’ve just bought go lower. Then again, I think it feels worse not to buy a fare because you think it will go lower only to see it skyrocket....

I’m in the middle right now of dealing with either totally gnarly food poisoning or the plague. It’s so bad it would be almost comical if it weren’t so miserable and causing me to be a serious party pooper for Josh’s birthday. Anyway, I’m not sure if it is my actual food poisoning/plague that has me feeling sick to my stomach, or the new round of airline passengers getting the boot....

United has been going through some big changes lately, and we’re due for one more next month. Back in June, United announced that it would be shifting all its transcontinental flights to Los Angeles (LAX) and San Francisco (SFO) from New York JFK to Newark (EWR) starting October 25, 2015.The ChangesThat means a whopping 32 transcontinental flights each day with the airline’s flagship p.s. Premium Service, including lie-flat BusinessFirst seats, will begin flying each day to/from Newark....

As a reminder, this whole week JetBlue is discounting last-minute flights from New York City this week up to 90% as part of a marketing campaign called Hot Seats. These deals will be available once the temperature in NYC reaches 90 degrees. This deal is valid for flights departing NYC (JFK, LGA, EWR) on July 19th or 20th, and returning July 22nd, 23rd or 24th. These are valid for round-trip tickets and only valid on new bookings....

On Friday, United Airlines President Scott Kirby sent out an internal memo with an immediate change to the airline’s quarterly bonus structure for employees.Until this announcement, flight attendants, gate agents, customer service representatives, pilots, counter agents, ramp agents, “management and administrative employees levels 5 and below” — and possibly more — were eligible to earn up to $375 each quarter the airline meets operational goals.After the change, if the airline meets operational goals, the airline will now pay out $100,000 to one lucky employee drawn by lottery, along with 1,360 smaller prizes — provided the employee has a perfect attendance record....

Highest waitlist priority. As a result, a Premier 1K member with the above travel activity (20,000 PQPs and 54-plus PQFs) will have a total of 320 PlusPoints. This would be worth $3,200 based on the above valuation for Platinums, but I’ll add $50 thanks to the added Skip Waitlist feature. Snack boxes and Bistro on Board items cost around $10 each, and you can expect to pay $5 for an alcoholic drink....

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.How’s this for a Valentine’s Day stunt? In order to promote the airline’s fare sale on Premium Economy seats, Virgin Atlantic took to the sky and created the ultimate symbol of love in the air.At 11:37am GMT, flight VS850 took off from London Gatwick airport (LGW) heading towards England’s southwestern coast....

Airbus will soon launch one of its newest aircraft, the A321LR. Although it won’t be the first airline to take delivery of the narrowbody plane, Irish carrier Aer Lingus will start flying the long-range aircraft in the second quarter of 2019.The A321LR is a single-aisle narrowbody aircraft that has a range much further than any other aircraft its size — even the newer more fuel efficient Boeing 737MAX or A320neo. It’s also a lot cheaper to operate than older aircraft like the Boeing 757 or larger ones like the Airbus A330 — both of which Aer Lingus currently flies....

This just in — Air France-KLM, Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic have created a four-way joint venture. On top of this, Delta and China Eastern will each acquire a 10% stake in Air France-KLM.To establish the joint venture, Air France-KLM will acquire Virgin Group’s 31% stake in Virgin Atlantic for £220 million, reducing the British-owned stake of one of the UK’s most famous brands from 51% to 20%. Despite this, Virgin Atlantic will retain its independence as a British airline with a UK air operating certificate, and will continue to fly under the Virgin brand....

2018 is expected to be a busy hurricane season, and it kicked off early with Subtropical Storm Alberto forming days before the season’s June 1 official start date. Now, the storm is churning toward a Memorial Day landfall near Panama City, Florida.As of the 11am advisory, Subtropical Storm Alberto has strengthened to 50-mph top sustained winds. While that’s not strong when it comes to top winds, the wind field is impressive with gusts of at least 39 mph reaching 125 miles east of the center of circulation....

American Airlines flyers can rejoice, as flying on the 777-300ER (77W) just got a little more comfortable — the last 77W is headed for premium economy refurbishment as of Tuesday.The plane, N734AR, operated its last revenue flight from London (LHR) to Dallas (DFW) on May 22, 2018, before heading to Everett (PAE) to be refit with premium economy seats. As of May 23, 2018, all 77Ws in service have a true premium economy cabin....

For years, Cathay Pacific has offered one of the best first-class products, and a fantastic business class as well, and the airline continues to make efforts to further improve its (overall fairly young) fleet, retiring the beloved but gas-guzzling 747 and adding the brand-new Airbus A350, which it will soon fly to San Francisco and Newark. But despite these passenger improvements (or perhaps partially because of them), Cathay has already lost a tremendous amount of money this year....