Merge your Delta and Northwest frequent flyer accounts — get 500 miles

by Grant Martin on

In this week’s chapter of “Merger Mania, Delta Devours Northwest,” lots of changes have happened to each respective frequent flyer program.

To merge the two programs, small changes in mileage earning, spending and transfer have been implemented, largely to make Northwest’s program emulate Delta. System Wide Upgrades, a feature that many Northwest flyers briefly enjoyed, will now be translated to Medallion Upgrades, a weaker, less useful tool. Northwest Platinum flyers will now earn fewer bonus miles as well; their earnings will be reduced from 125% to 100%.

The most abhorrent change to the programs, however, is the addition of an extra “reward tier” on mileage tickets. As billed, this change is supposed to provide “more flexibility” by charging more miles and providing extra seats when searching for rewards. But in actuality, it’s just another way to gouge passengers.

Think of it this way. Last year, if you wanted to fly from Atlanta to New York there were 10 options to fly for 25k miles. This year, there are 20 options to fly at 30 – 35k miles and 2 options to fly at 25k miles. And those latter flights? Only good on Wednesday redeyes on a 12 seat propeller plane.

It’s not that egregious, but you get the picture.

The (scant) good news is that we now have better, fluid access between both accounts. As of last week, passengers from each program can log in, link accounts and swap miles, which means if you have orphaned miles in either account, you can move them over. Yes, you can move elite miles as well.

You can link the accounts by going under Worldperks | Manage My Account | Link Accounts and Transfer Miles. Once you link them up, you’ll get 500 bonus miles.

If you want to read more about the details of the mergers, a good resource is Flyertalk.

Police haul HBO executive, husband off Delta Airlines flight

by Jeffrey White on

A high-profile couple from New York was recently hauled off a Delta Airlines flight after the man allegedly verbally abused a flight attendant because his television in first class didn’t work.

Sheila Nevins, the president of HBO Documentary Films, and her husband Sidney Koch are considering legal action against Delta, the New York Times’s Caucus Blog reports. Their lawyer, John Horan, tells the Times: “They were detained at JFK in a public space for two hours and were humiliated by the experience. It was ghastly and unnecessary.”

What happened, you ask?
The couple was traveling back to New York from the Sundance Film Festival on Inauguration Day, in first class. Apparently they had confirmed ahead of time with Delta that live television would be available in first class, so that they could watch President Obama’s speech. But upon takeoff many of the TVs in first class malfunctioned, including Sheila Nevins’. Compounding this, the pilot reportedly kept pausing the entertainment system — therefore interrupting Obama’s speech — with announcements about various landmarks the plane was flying over.

This was all enough to send Sidney Koch into a rage, says the Times. Delta claims Koch became “verbally abusive” to a flight attendant. Koch admits that he lost his temper, and he says he apologized to the flight attendant.

Nevertheless, local police met the flight at JFK and removed the couple from the plane. They were not issued any summons after their questioning at the airport.

What do you think about this? Did the flight attendant overreact? Does the couple have a case against Delta? In our post-9/11 world, do flight attendants at times appear a little too quick to get law enforcement involved? I mean, the guy was pissed about his TV, so he turns around and, what, pledges to bring down the plane?

Obviously a lot has to do with what was actually said in this case, and maybe we’ll never know that.

I for one find the word’s of Delta’s spokesperson, Betsy Talton, interesting. Speaking to the Times, she says specifically that Koch was “verbally abusive” to the FA. She doesn’t use the word “threat.”

No one has the right to abuse a flight attendant, verbally or otherwise. But what constitutes actually threatening a flight?

Launching into a name-calling, profanity-fueled rage against a FA is wrong, but do you put me in cuffs? Is it tantamount to physically endangering the flight by, say, charging the cockpit or attacking someone?


Aside from snooty cable tv execs, what other odd things have been found on planes? Click the images to find out!

Man gets off plane via exit door: Did he wait for the ding?

by Jamie Rhein on

Don’t try this at home.

When a Delta plane arriving from Salt Lake City landed in Phoenix yesterday, one man opened the emergency exit door at the back and got off by hopping off the wing. Or perhaps he climbed down? Regardless of how he got off, he was apprehended, naturally, and could be in bigger trouble than he anticipated.

To his credit, the plane was at the terminal already, and other passengers were beginning to exit the front like normal people do. It wasn’t like he got off in the middle of the runway before the plane taxied to safety. People who apprehended him were runway personnel. One has to wonder what this guy was thinking and where he was going.

The man is old enough to know better–he is 37, but perhaps he was aiming to relive a school days experience when kids sometimes bolt off a school bus out the exit door. I remember that scenario happening on at least one occasion. It wasn’t me.

Maybe all those people struggling to remove the carry-ons they brought on the plane with them to avoid checked baggage fees made him snap. [via FoxNews.com]

Other tales from the skies
Amazing and insane stories from a real-life flight attendant and co-pilot

Hot or not? JetBlue decides for flight attendant

by Tom Johansmeyer on

JetBlue may not comment on litigation, as it told USA Today, but clearly flight attendant attire is fair game. The airline is being sued by Karin Keegan. In what appears to be the friendly skies’ version of “put out or get out,” Keegan was not allowed to board a JetBlue flight because she wasn’t dressed provocatively enough. After ditching her threads for something she felt would be more consistent with JetBlue’s unusual “standards,” Keegan was told that she had missed her flight … and that she should have dressed the part of a sexy flight attendant from the start.

Keegan was flying JetBlue because of an agreement the airline has with her employer (Delta), under which Delta employees are ferried among locations. The altercation occurred in October 2007. The flight attendant complained to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, which gave her a “right to sue” letter late last year. Though not an employee of JetBlue, the law gives her the right “sue over workplace harassment even when they are not directly employed by the alleged harasser,” according to reporting by USA Today.

JetBlue’s recent spanking in Connecticut small claims court is nothing compared to this debacle, which is headed for federal court. If the airline is looking for some form of precedent to cite, it may want to consider France’s advances in attire and accommodation.

Maybe a scantily clad workforce is JetBlue’s way of making a nine-hour stint on the runway more bearable for passengers, but c’mon guys, there has to be a better way.

[Via USA Today]

[Picture via The Sun]


Keegan wasn’t provocative enough. Check out the stories from these women — who were all too provocative!


Passenger makes bomb threat on Delta flight to LA

by Scott Carmichael on

I’m not sure whether it is something in the water, or just a general increase of insane people, but another fool has managed to get arrested after making a bomb threat on his Delta Airlines flight to LA airport.

The man got up out of his chair upon approach to LAX, and announced that he was carrying a bomb.

Several passengers on the flight then subdued the guy, and used plastic ties to keep him from creating more trouble. When the plane landed, the guy then attempted to leave the plane through an emergency exit.

The photo you see above was taken by a passenger on the flight, and was sent to the CNN iReporters site using his Blackberry, talk about a live action report!

Of course, the various federal agencies are now involved, and will be investigating the motives of the suspect, as well as checking the plane for any explosives.

It’s one thing to joke about a bomb, it’s a completely different ballgame when you actually stand up and make such a threat, and hopefully the fool behind this will be locked away for enough time to think long and hard about his actions, and how the passengers on his flight must have felt. Pretty soon the greatest threat to aviation won’t be terrorists, it’ll be insane people.