Delta & Travel News: 50% jump in SDC fees, underfeeding during delays fine and WW2 mine floating in Swedish waters.

Let’s catch up on some of the latest Delta and other travel news over the past few weeks and see what caught my eye and may just be of interest to you as well.

• Delta jumps SDC & SDS fees by 50% for Silver Medallions and everyone else. The Same Day Change and Same Day Standby rules are harder than the long form doing your taxes. If you have questions about either one ask me. Just know unless you are Gold Medallion or higher it will now cost you more!

• Air France KLM Flying Blue Improves Expiration Policy. Well it is about time. I hate, I mean really hate programs like SAS Eurobonus that expire your points after a few years even when you fly their jets over and over. It makes keeping their points literately pointless. Happy KLM finally got with the times (the 1990’s?)!

• Delta fined $90,000 for inadequate food service during tarmac delays. I often get questions about what Delta owes me for some delay or another. Keep in mind we are NOT in the EU so there is little any US airlines by law owe you other than your money back or to get you, at some point, where you need to go. However, if they don’t take care of you on long delays, i.e. feed you or keep you locked up on a jet for more than 3 hours without the option to get off, they will likely have to pay the government a few travel vouchers dollars!

• 1930s naval mine found near swimming spot in Stockholm. I remember growing up as a child near my family’s summer home that it was an every few year event that a mine would float up somewhere or damage or destroy a ship from WW2. Scary stuff and think how many are still around.

• Rolls-Royce Reports Record Loss In 2016. There were a lot of factors impacting this but always interesting to see what is going on with one of the few major jet engine manufactures on the planet.

• Australians Wave Goodbye to Lavish Credit Card Perks. Banks can only reward us who manage our credit well with lavish frequent flyer points if there are enough fees to offset these perks. It is interesting that the current US administration may we working in the exact other direction and we may get debit cards that pay out points again (in a meaningful way that is).

• McDeltaOne ? – Airline Child Meal [CHML] in a Premium Cabin on Delta. What is up with Delta and food as of late. Then again, they normally hit home runs so I am willing to give Delta a lot of latitude when it comes to food on-board their jets at 500MPH.

• New Delta seats at Hartsfield-Jackson raise hard questions. Gosh it is so great that I can now pick a guest pass as my Diamond Choice benefit since these new seats are harder than rocks. No wait, they still have not fixed the bug and I can NOT guest folks into the Sky Clubs with my Delta AMEX Reserve card yet. Guess my friends get to try these while I enjoy the Sky Deck?

• Delta Warming Up To JetBlue’s Mint. So Delta is chasing JetBlue. AA now is chasing Delta and adding meals to coach on some of these routes. They are all adding food and such because in the past they would offer more frequent flyer miles to get folks to fly more. Now that SkyMiles and AA-miles are nearly worthless they don’t offer them anymore. So let’s try food etc?

• Delta CEO on Trump, flying cars and the future of Logan. I don’t talk about politics but things like travel bans I do talk about. The current administration has travel ban 2.0 out now and it looks like the courts are blocking that one too.

So these are 10 of the latest news headlines that I found interesting. I am sure there were a ton more that you found and made you go hummmm…. If you can please share them in the comments below and include a link to the story. Do note doing this may dump it into SPAM with WordPress but I will dig it out later today and take your comment live! – René