Manufactured Spending woes, The Phonetic Alphabet, British Airways’ #avgeek obsession with 747

Note: We’re short this week, in advance of the holiday, primarily due to workload in my full time job. Sorry!

The Weekly News Roundup is a collection of headlines from around the internet that caught the attention of the Tagging Miles team. Content on these blogs do not necessarily reflect the positions of Tagging Miles, and should not be considered endorsements. Have a great story we should read? Contact us now and let us know!

Travel

• From Airways News, Japan Airlines will return to Dallas Fort Worth. I see this making sense on a number of levels, especially with OneWorld partner American Airlines based there.
• Gary Leff likes the Phonetic (although he calls it Zulu) Alphabet. Being a licensed ship captain, I learned to love the phonetic alphabet early in life, because anytime I got on the radio, I had to be ready to use it. So I share his frustration with “Jellybean” instead of “Juliet”, or “Apple” instead of “Alpha.”

Miles and Points

• Chasing the points highlights the latest changes being rolled out by Rite-aid, and further, the importance of social engineering when manufacturing spend.
• Loyalty Rewards  from a retailer are still points in my book… Of course, none of my points are as valuable as some Bloomingdales Loyalist members who happened to capitalize on a mistake. PF Digest covers.
• Chasing the Points notes that you may not be best by pre-paying your credit card. Especially if its a Comenity card, but, even so, well worth a read.

#AvGeek

• British Airways’ love affair with the 747 –– at least someone is still keeping the Queen of the Skies in, well, the sky!
• Wasn’t sure how to catalog this one, but Republic Airways continues to have issues with its pilots. It’s really not surprising, regional airline pilots are hard to come by, becoming a regional airline pilot is expensive, yet Republic (and probably other regionals) can’t pay wages that support paying for the expense of being a pilot. Republic and others point to the mainline carriers (Delta, American, United), but, regardless of who is at blame, it will hurt many.
• Last but not least, check out this video that Scott Mayerowitz and the Associated Press put together: