Happy Thursday to all of our travel friends, both near and far. Here are some articles we’ve read from other bloggers (and other sources) that we think you may like, as well, so we’re passing them along.
- In 2019, JetBlue announced plans to expand with trans-Atlantic flights to London from its Boston and New York hubs. The move was surprising because the airline didn’t have any airport slots in London, which are highly coveted by airlines worldwide. Then 2020 happened and it was no surprise that the new flights were delayed from the beginning of 2021 to sometime later in the year. At the time, JetBlue still hadn’t announced which London airport they’d be using. The global travel slowdown provided a great opportunity and reports are saying that JetBlue pulled off a bit of a coup and has secured slots at London Heathrow for its flights.
- We’re following Japan’s re-opening closely because we’re still recovering from canceling our trip this year and want to rebook for 2021. The country is taking a measured approach to reopening, slowly allowing people back in but only from a few countries and most of those passengers are traveling for business purposes. I guess that’s going OK so far because Japan is planning on reopening borders to many countries, including the US. However, they’re not welcoming tourists. Only foreigners who are students, medical workers, or who are there for cultural activities are permitted entry. While that sounds promising, it includes a 14-day-quarantine and a minimum stay of 90 days. Arrivals will be limited to 1,000 people per day. Whatever, it’s progress.
- Hawaii’s reopening date is less than two weeks away. While many people can’t wait to get back to their tropical paradise, there’s still much confusion about how to get a test that will satisfy Hawaii’s requirements. Hawaiian Airlines is trying to make things as easy as possible for its passengers and is setting up COVID-19 drive-thru sites in Los Angeles and San Francisco where passengers can get tested before their flight. The tests will cost $90 for results within 36 hours, or $150 for day-of-travel express service.
- While many US airlines have started to eliminate the points expiration or inactivity policy for award points, airlines from overseas still have them intact. Their expiration requirements are less stringent than their American counterparts, often only requiring activity every 3 years instead of every three months. Virgin Atlantic is the first major airline from across the pond to say that their points will no longer expire. The new Virgin Points program has points that never expire and will eventually be used across multiple Virgin businesses (maybe the hotels and cruise line will be included at some point.)
- Online privacy is something that we should always be thinking about. Whether it’s using a VPN when connecting to a WiFi network or setting a strong password for your IHG account instead of keeping a 4 digit PIN. During the lockdown, one of the things I suggested to keep yourself occupied was to set strong, unique passwords for all of your online accounts. To keep these organized, it pays to get a good password manager. I use 1Password for this and I was happy to see that one of the program’s new features is that you will now be able to create a virtual credit card number for all of your online purchases. This means even if a hacker gets your credit card number it will be useless since it was only good for a single purchase.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
