Year: 2025

Alaska Airlines and Philippine Airlines announce partnership

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Philippines Airlines via Glenn Beltz

From Alaska Airlines —

Alaska Airlines is celebrating the addition of our newest global airline partner, Philippine Airlines, the flag carrier of the Philippines and the oldest operating commercial airline in Asia. With our new frequent flyer partnership, Alaska becomes Philippine Airlines’ first loyalty partner in North America, opening the door for our guests to book travel to exotic, once-in-a-lifetime destinations such as Palawan and Boracay in the Philippines.

In the coming months, our guests will be able to book flights on Philippine Airlines directly at alaskaair.com, earn Mileage Plan miles for their travel and redeem Mileage Plan miles for Philippine Airlines flights.

 

I have to hand it to Alaska Airlines for continuing to grow their partnership portfolio. Manila seems to be a quickly growing market, with United now offering two non-stops a day from San Francisco. What remains to be seen with this announced Alaska-Philippine partnership is whether or not onward flights will actually be sold via Alaska’s website. In my experience, the IT aspects of Alaska when booking partner flights on their website leaves a lot of be desired. For example, try to book something like Seattle-Frankfurt, a simple itinerary where Alaska could offer Seattle-London-Frankfurt or even Seattle-Helsinki-Frankfurt, but Alaska will only offer Seattle-Dublin-Frankfurt. Other itineraries are similar, all over the world.

This is particularly frustrating as Alaska promises even more miles on partners when booking through their website. If you book a partner on a partner’s website and credit to Alaska you receive fewer miles; A business class fare on British Airways purchased on ba.com earns only 125% elite miles on Alaska. If you were able to book the ticket on Alaska’s website, it would earn 250% elite miles.

It’s hard to know whether this is intentional or if it is just a lack of IT capabilities. My guess is that there is a huge backlog of technical functionality that needs to be looked at and changed as part of the merger with Hawaiian Airlines and this is taking priority over needs, including partner integration issues.

Another part of this announcement that I find intriguing is that Alaska is actively seeking partners even after the integration into oneworld. It speaks to the fact that the alliances don’t reach everywhere but such connectivity is needed. It might also hint at Philippine Airlines being interested in eventually joining oneworld, kind of like Starlux has hinted at.

 

In any case, I think this is great news for frequent travelers and we might see some great reward availability open up to southeast Asia so keep an eye out for that! What are your thoughts on the Alaska/Philippine Airlines partnership?

Photo from Glenn Beltz on Flickr.

JetBlue-United Partnership Rumors

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From Reuters —

JetBlue Airways (JBLU.O), opens new tab and United Airlines (UAL.O), opens new tab have been negotiating a partnership, three industry sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The partnership with United is envisioned as quite different from the NEA, the sources said. While the alliance is expected to focus on providing greater connectivity to customers and allowing them to earn and burn frequent-flier miles, the two carriers will not coordinate on schedules and pricing, they added.

 

Another rumor, from Corriere, an Italian news outlet, is that United would receive 20 slots at JFK in the partnership.

United Airlines, one of the largest carriers in the world and a longtime ally of Lufthansa (soon also of ITA Airways), is turning its attention to low-cost carrier JetBlue in an attempt to challenge Delta Air Lines at one of its key hubs: New York’s JFK Airport. The Chicago-based airline — which currently operates from Newark, across the Hudson River in New Jersey — is exploring various options ranging from a commercial alliance to a full acquisition. United wants to return to JFK operations as soon as possible by taking over 20 slot pairs (allowing for 40 daily flights, between arrivals and departures) and access to 2 boarding gates from JetBlue. This is according to four U.S. sources familiar with the internal talks, speaking to Corriere.

 

With 20 slots at JFK, United would certainly look to bring back service to San Francisco and Los Angeles. Back in 2022, United CEO Scott Kirby told Bloomberg as much.

“Well certainly the place that we, whether it’s through JetBlue or somewhere else, we would like to get back into JFK in a big way, particularly in the transcon market. So getting enough slots at JFK that we can get back to serving San Francisco and Los Angeles, particularly for business customers, and having another real option for business customers in those markets that would be our number one priority.”

 

If these rumors are true and a partnership between JetBlue and United is really coming, it will definitely shake things up at JFK and could present some interesting frequent flyer opportunities. Since none of the rumors state a timeline for the partnership, we will have to wait and see for this to all fall into place.

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures database funding ending

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From The Register —

The 25-year-old CVE program plays a huge role in vulnerability management. It is responsible overseeing the assignment and organizing of unique CVE ID numbers, such as CVE-2014-0160 and CVE-2017-5754, for specific vulnerabilities, in this case OpenSSL’s Heartbleed and Intel’s Meltdown, so that when referring to particular flaws and patches, everyone is agreed on exactly what we’re all talking about.

It is used by companies big and small, developers, researchers, the public sector, and more as the primary system for identifying and squashing bugs. When multiple people find the same hole, CVEs are useful for ensuring everyone is working toward that one specific issue.

 

It basically works like this: When an individual researcher or an organization discovers a new bug in some product, a CVE program partner — there are currently a few hundred across 40 countries — is asked to assess the vulnerability report and assign a unique CVE identifier for the flaw if and as necessary.

The program is sponsored, and largely funded by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, aka CISA, under the umbrella of the US Department of Homeland Security. It appears MITRE has been paid roughly $30 million since 2023 to run CVE and associated programs.

 

This funding ended last week. Keeping developers informed about vulnerabilities in a central location is a national security issue as well as a business issue. If your product is exploited and costs you money as a business owner is one thing, but if the thing that was exploited was a tool that other companies use as well, then the exploit could be expanded and impact huge swaths of the U.S. economy, see Heartbleed.

Remember this date

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I think March 3, 2025 will go down in the history books as the day a switch flipped in the United States. A turning point, an impetus, a peak before a cliff. I’m posting this mostly for myself so I can look back and remember the exact date of when it happened.

It feels like we are entering a part of American history that we might not be ready for or one that we truly understand until a historians examine it 50 or 60 years later.

A little travel photography

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In January I had a work trip to Lisbon and at the end of that trip I met up with a few friends in Glasgow to explore the city and fly on a route that is famous in aviation geek circles, the Glasgow to Barra route where the runway in Barra is the low tide sand of the island. On the way home I had a half day in London and spent those hours walking around enjoying the people watching. These are a few of the photos I took and I’ve embedded a video of our departure from Glasgow and landing in Barra for your enjoyment.

Tower Bridge in London

London stylish couple

I always enjoy walking around London. My mission on this trip was a visit to a couple of specific coffee shops and I was not disappointed.

The time in Glasgow was a little less rushed with the only commitment being the flight to Barra. I visited a few coffee shops, with a couple being fantastic and one being not so great.

Queen Street Station - Glasgow

Crossing the street in Glasgow

Lastly, the video of the flight to Barra. The highlight of the trip.

CLEAR comes to PDX

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CLEAR, the “secure identity company” that allows you to pay to bypass part of the security line, launched lanes at Portland International Airport on Friday —

Today, CLEAR (NYSE: YOU), the secure identity company, is launching its identity verification technology at Portland International Airport (PDX), bringing frictionless and predictable travel experiences to Oregon. CLEAR’s launch at PDX is expected to create 53 jobs and generate over $3 million annually in local economic impact.

 

We could get into CLEAR as a business and how it’s weird how they have to offer all of these extra services (AllTrails premium, etc.) but what I want to focus on is how unnecessary CLEAR is at PDX. Before Covid, I flew out of PDX every week and with PreCheck it never took me more than 10 minutes to get through security during the busiest time of day, 6:30am-9am. Maybe CLEAR benefits those who don’t have PreCheck but want to skip the long line for regular security?

Instead of bringing in CLEAR, I wish the Port of Portland and the TSA would have worked together to make sure the scanning machines were fully staffed during the busiest days and hours. That alone would save people tons of time.

This falls into one of those weird “privatization of a service that really shouldn’t even be a service” categories. Just make security better and we don’t need CLEAR.