One Way Awards now available on United
• One-Way Awards are available for both Saver Awards (fewer miles) and Standard Awards (more miles and more flexibility).
• You can use these awards to fly United- or United Express-operated flights only. Sorry, these awards cannot currently be used with our airline partners.
• You must fly the most direct route from origin to destination. That means no stopovers. You can, however, make connections. Tip: If you want to visit multiple cities, you can use multiple One-Way Awards to create your itinerary.
• Complete One-Way Awards rules
Did your flight depart late but arrive early?
Airlines are padding their schedules by adding minutes to the flight duration to ensure that more flights arrive on time and boost their “on-time” performance ratings. It used to be that if your flight left late, you knew you would arrive late. But now, travelers are beginning to notice that you can leave late and arrive early.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, it analyzed 50 different domestic flight times and learned they are about 10% longer in March 2010 than March 1996. Airlines say they have to build in congested airports and air-traffic control delays. In addition, planes are flying about 2% slower to save fuel costs. Airlines use historical data to estimate schedules and aim for about 65% of flights getting to the gate exactly at the scheduled arrival time. The DOT gives a 15-minute cushion to rate “on-time”.
Northwest Airlines is no more
Delta has completed their integration of Northwest Airlines and January 30th saw the last flights operating as Northwest. Any future flights that were ticketed as Northwest were automatically converted to Delta flight numbers over the past weekend.
